


Playing Games in The Dark

by cockatoo



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood, Childhood Friends, Complete, Depression, Dubious Ethics, Growing Up, Homosexuality, Jealousy, Love Triangles, M/M, Mild Disabilities, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-04-21 06:49:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4819289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cockatoo/pseuds/cockatoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All it took was maliciousness and a broken ladder to change Newt’s world for ever. Now he’s growing up like a flower without the sun, disfigured and confused as he tries to remember what he was before. And the game isn’t fair because he’s at a disadvantage, but that doesn’t stop Thomas in the endless game of jealousy and spite for Minho’s heart. And Thomas will stop at nothing to prevent Newt from winning the affections of their shared childhood best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Playing the Victim

They are young, born again in the springtime that warms their skin and blinds their eyes. Minho, like always, runs the fastest. His small legs are far stronger than the others as he jumps over tree trunks and pushes through the branches. Thomas is next, like always, following Minho with a childish admiration that seems to fuel everything he ever does. And as the reality repeats itself again, Newt is last. The blonde boy favours lighter treads and a slower pace as he marvels at the trees and the spaces between the trees that exist only within the forest and within his eyesight. He feels weightless in the moment, suspended in thought before Minho’s voice echoes throughout the universe.

The birds even stay, despite the sound, to marvel at Minho’s words, “I told you I would find it again!”

Even from where he stands Newt can tell Thomas is nodding with a star-struck look in his eyes.

They wait for Newt to catch up like always does eventually, the two taller boys shifting from foot to foot as they look back up at the treehouse.

This is their refuge, a place that was built with them in mind by strangers, seemingly constructed in this exact place for this exact moment. It is everything Minho told Newt it would be, everything that was them, mangled and dirtied from the tree that it grips to with a suffocating grip. It looks like it will fall and crush them, and maybe it will, but Minho always told him that was part of the fun.

Minho, like always, doesn’t wait for a dare or a question or even so much as a word. He climbs the wooden ladder like he was made to, and Thomas and Newt know he was.

His smirking face looks down at them when he reaches the top, “Come on you slintheads, it’s awesome up here, you can see everything!”

The prospect of height was one that often appealed to Newt, but the tree’s menacing glare was one that defeated Minho’s encouragements.

Thomas, like always, follows Minho’s words with speed, his legs shaking on the ladder but Minho’s smile inspires him further.

Newt, like always, is alone on the forest floor.

From high up in the treehouse Thomas looks down at him, like he’s something unworthy and insignificant in their eyes and the eyes of the universe.  The brunette sits behind Minho, his breath ghosting the other boy’s neck until Newt can almost hear Thomas’ lips pull into a smile.

The wind picks up again, the sound whistling through the trees and cooling Newt’s small form.

“Come on Newt, you can do it!” Minho shouts. He isn’t patronising, he isn’t joking or humouring Newt’s existence, he speaks in a way that makes Newt feel like everything he knows he isn’t.

Maybe it was bravery or maybe it was ignorance, but Newt follows Minho’s instructions with a feigned confidence. The wood quivers beneath his feet, the ladder’s stray splinters loosening his hold. But he makes it up eventually, the heavy swell of pride growing within his chest.

Thomas bites his lip when Newt meets his narrowed gaze. But Minho only grins.

They talk about trivial matters, from school to girls. Minho admitting that he thought Teresa from class was cute causing Newt and Thomas’ eyes to filter to the floor. Thomas then exclaimed, rather loudly, that Brenda had kissed him behind the school gates last Friday. Minho begged for every detail, eyes widening at the knowledge of saliva and cherry flavoured lip-balm.

Thomas’ smile was one of victory, looking down at Newt with a smirk, “What about you Newt? Have you ever kissed a girl?” The boy doesn’t ask from curiosity or in the attempts of bonding, he asks to put Newt on the spot so Minho can laugh about how stupid and babyish he was.

“Not Newt!” Minho laughs, “He’s way too smart for girls.”

Newt’s smile barely tightens his lips before Thomas’ cruel laugh cuts it off.

“Newt’s way too much of a _nerd_ to even talk to a girl,” He mocks.

“I have too!” Newt exclaims, the lie warming his cheeks in apology.

Thomas scowls, “Yeah right, like any girl would want to kiss you.”

“Y-Yeah well Harriet asked me out!” He replied, pouting his lips and avoiding Minho’s eyes.

The treehouse shook beneath them, groaning and growling at the force of the wind.

“You’re a liar,” Thomas spits, both he and Minho look at him with a raised eyebrow.

Newt doesn’t correct him and neither does Minho, they just look to Thomas and his smile and the bright shine in his eyes.

Minho changes the subject causing Thomas too quickly dismiss Newt’s entire presence. They talk about all the things Newt doesn’t understand, all the things Newt doesn’t like but pretends he does, like running and sports and girls and mischief.

Thomas and Minho are everything alike.

The blonde looks at his watch with a surprised gasp, “It’s five o’clock!”

Minho snaps his head in his direction, “Really? Shuck, guess we better go home then.”

The boy then turns to the ladder with a casual whimsy, only halted my Thomas’ tight grip on his wrist. Minho turns to Thomas with a confused look.

“We don’t have to go,” Thomas tells him, “You’re mum said you didn’t have to be home till six. Newt can go home alone, he isn’t that much of a baby.”

Newt fears Minho will nod, that he will laugh or smile at Thomas in the way he does when they do something wrong, when they do something they both like and Newt doesn’t understand. The blonde feels smaller than he ever has before.

But Minho, like always, surprises him with comfort, “Don’t be mean Tom, it’s getting pretty dark so we better head back. We can come back tomorrow.”

Newt was busy tomorrow, he was going to visit his grandparents in the city and Thomas and Minho knew that.

He was invisible in the eyes of the universe.

Thomas smiles, “Alright then.”

Minho descends the ladder first, setting the perfect example of what to do effortlessly, meeting the ground with a silent thump. The forest welcomes Minho back, the wind pausing as if to steady the taller boy.

Thomas pushes Newt back and grabs the ladder, the wood protesting underneath his weight. He makes it about ten steps down before the ladder breaks, Thomas hitting the ground with an audible smack of body meeting nature.

“Are you alright?” Minho cries, picking him up from the floor.

The brunette blushes at the others hands, nodding timidly, “I’m fine.”

The two of them look back up at the treehouse, Newt’s dark eyes filling with worry as he watches them.

“H-How am I supposed to get down?” He cries.

“Don’t worry,” Minho shouts, and Newt’s almost inclined to believe his words, “I’ll go get your dad, he’ll know what to do.” He turns to the forest with a determined speed.

Thomas quickly jumps up, forgetting his fictional injuries in favour of close proximity. His hand is cold on Minho’s. “What about me?”

“Just stay with Newt, I’ll be back in a second, I swear.” And that’s all he says before he’s swallowed up by the forest.

Newt can hear the brunette’s murmured curses at the trunk of the tree. Thomas violently kicks rocks around the forest floor, the fallen debris from the tree slinters under his feet and the harsh force of his movements.

“This is all your fault,” Thomas tells him, a whisper that rebels against the nature and gravity for the sole purpose of making Newt feel small and powerless from so high up in the tree. The older boy looks up at him with a villainous smile, “He doesn’t even like you, he told me. He just pities you, hell everyone does. He hates that you follow him around like a bad smell, everyone thinks so, everyone thinks you’re a little germ.”

 _‘He,’_ Minho is he and he is everything that ever existed or ever should. He is the one that made Newt feel like a something and used his words and smile and unquestionable kindness to make Newt believe in himself. He was the one that told him he was smart and strong and funny.

Thomas is the _‘me,’_ the controller, the puppeteer, the centre of it all. Thomas is the one that sets fire to everything Newt believes in with harshness, with neglect, with a turned cheek and a mischievous smile.

Newt is the _‘you,’_ the distant and unwanted, directed to the emptiness and paraded around like a jester as he quivers, as he cries, as he dies from the sheer lack of everything. He lives in the nothingness that he believes in, that Thomas claims exists so therefore it does, therefore the nothing is a something that Thomas likes.

Newt doesn’t correct Thomas because Thomas is right and he’s playing by the rules. But Thomas created the rules, he made the game up from the limitless power of his imagination and he told Newt he was playing the game with no instructions and no rules except inferiority, a fight for power and affection. Thomas is right because Thomas says he’s right, and Newt’s not qualified enough to call him out on the injustice.

Thomas is the winner, he’s the powerful, the ruler. He’s Minho’s best friend.

The tracks of Minho’s feet are consumed by the soil, the memory of his presence exists only within their minds and in the hope of his return.

It’s a waiting game, them both waiting for Minho to return with help or empty handed, or for Thomas to grow bored and wonder off without so much as a goodbye. Newt is waiting because it’s all he can do, all that Thomas allows him. Thomas is waiting because he’s scared if he doesn’t, Minho will think less of him.

Thomas looks back up at him with wide brown eyes. He looks like an animal, like a deer that’s the hunter or a bird that choses to watch instead of fly from danger.

“You can get down by yourself,” Thomas declares.

“N-No I can’t,” Newt replies, his legs wavering under his fatigue.

“Yes you can,” He shouts, “For shucks sake you can, you’re just too much of a baby!”

Newt whimpers, “No I’m not.

The brunette smiles, “Prove it,” he says, _“Jump.”_

The treehouse shakes, the vibrations weakening Newt’s hold on reality so all he sees is the floor and Thomas’ feral eyes. The floor looks too far away, Thomas the almighty dot on the map that looks back at him with a winning smile.

If Newt jumps, Thomas wins.

If Newt refuses, Thomas wins.

But Newt so desperately wants to win, wants Minho to come back with him on the floor and unharmed, with Thomas gone and the forest’s heavy cover to protect them both. He wants Minho to tell him he’s amazing, that he’s strong and beautiful and so much better than Thomas. He wants to win, he wants to beat Thomas for the first time in his life.

So Newt does what he shouldn’t do, he dangles his legs off the edge of the treehouse and tries not to look down.

He thinks Thomas will tell him he’s useless, that’s he’s too much of a baby to it. But he doesn’t. Both he and Newt are waiting in a stalemate, willing Newt to do something, _anything_ that will change the course of silence.

The treehouse shakes again, the wind rushing through Newt’s hair until it feels like its carrying him, like he’s an insignificant leaf from the tree that’s fate lies on the floor amongst the dirt and the forgotten.

But Newt doesn’t fall like a leaf, he doesn’t float down with an elegance or a destiny, only with a heavy rush of adrenaline and a crushing smash of bones as his body hits the floor.

Thomas looks at his body in fear. Newt doesn’t move.

The forest is silent, no wind or movement sounds into the atmosphere leaving a silent nothingness to fill the space of the forest. Newt’s scream and splutter of tears awakens the nature of the act, his tiny voice being carried by the sympathies of the forest.

“Newt!” His father’s voice cries, rushing over to the boy with instinct. Minho runs into view from behind him, his eyes wide in concern and confusion.

Newt can only see blurs of colour, he can only feel the pain bleed into his senses until all he feels is the dark puddle of misery that surrounds him. He can’t hear his father’s comforting words of question, he can’t feel the hand checking his twisted leg for broken bones, and he certainly can’t see Thomas walk up to Minho’s side and fall into his embrace. He can’t see Minho hold him back, can’t hear the comforting words directed at the brunette because Newt’s mind is filled with one thought, the thought that tells him that Thomas has won.

 

* * *

 

 

That summer was lonely, his leg filled with metal and aches from the physiotherapy that was filled with far more promise that rewards. His father, the nurse and the surgeon had all asked him what happened, and Newt had told them it was an accident and they had believed him because he gave them no reason to believe otherwise.

Minho still came over with a card every week, his messages of ‘get well soon’ made everything seem okay for the two minutes that he’d visit. Thomas would come along too, he didn’t bring a card and he didn’t tell anyone the truth, he just recycled Minho’s words with a far less sincere tone and looked at his leg with a small smile.

Newt missed a lot of school that year, he took months off in hope his leg would get better. It was only a month ago when the doctors told his father to tell to him that his leg wasn’t _going_ to get better. Newt had cried because that was what he was supposed to do, and his father had held him and told him everything was going to be okay.

He didn’t go to school after that because he didn’t like his crutches or the happy look on Thomas’ face when he’d use them. He didn’t like the sadness or the whispers. He didn’t like the pitying look in Minho’s eyes.

His father hired him a tutor ‘the best in the business’ he told Newt hoping he would smile or do a one legged jump of happiness. Newt had looked at him with a monotone stare before falling back to a hopefully convincing smile.

 _“Just for this year,”_ his father had told him but Newt knew he could change his mind. Next year was the first year of big school, new children, new cliques and stereotypes that just didn’t fit Newt’s crutches and pre-pubescent body. He only talked to his father and the tutor, occasionally Minho when he’d visit but rarely, the whole interaction too punctual and uncomfortable to feel natural. He didn’t talk to Thomas because the other boy’s eyes said all they needed and everything Newt already knew.

Everything was worse than it was before, he had a new bedroom on the ground floor and all the bathrooms had handles so he could pull himself around without help. Everything was different because he had jumped, because he ‘fell’, because he needed Minho’s approval and to beat Thomas.

Everything had changed and nothing was ever going to be the same again.

 

* * *

 

 

Newt could walk unassisted now, his crutches were still there for when he was tired or in pain, but now he could walk independently with a woeful limp. His father gushed about how well he was doing, the physiotherapist asking Newt how proud and excited he was. Newt told the doctor he was because that was what he was supposed to do to make everything quiet down again.

Over dinner his father suggested he go out with his friends, somewhere nice and quiet. Newt had nodded because that was what he was supposed to do to make his father drop the subject and let him return to his bedroom.

Minho and Thomas had turned up the following day, Newt cursing at the knowledge that his father had called their parents to plan a forced play-date. Minho looked much older but he was exactly how Newt remembered him being, nice and enthusiastic as he told Newt about how long it had been, about how much he missed him and how happy he was to see him walking again.

He carried Newt’s crutches through the forest, telling Newt about all the trivial things that mattered to Minho which consisted of running and sports and girls and the new school. Newt listened because it was Minho and he spoke with such a passion that Newt almost fell in love with the running and the sports and the girls at the new school.

Thomas walked behind them both with a sour expression on his face.

They didn’t walk to the treehouse, Newt noted, feeling both angered and happy that Minho had taken the accident into consideration. Instead they walked to the stream, stopping when Newt got tired and Thomas began complaining.

They watched their reflections in the water, watched the wind ghost across the water’s surface causing ripples to blur their faces. The water smelled pure, like dirt and nature, like their childhood of scraped knees and adventures.

Minho, like always, acted first, taking off his shirt and his shorts and jumped into the water. His body was toned with age, his features choosing handsomeness over cuteness, looking far superior to the other Minho that swam in the same stream only a year ago.

Newt tried to pretend it all didn’t exist, that his leg was fine and Minho was just a normal boy with platonic intentions, but the waters reflection refused to bend to his desires causing all the things Newt pretended didn’t exist to be heightened in the shine of the sun. He tried to squint to distort Minho’s beauty because Minho was the one thing in the world he couldn’t bear to lose. He gave the universe his innocence and his leg to do so, and he’d sacrifice everything to keep the boy close.

Thomas was watching him too, his blush too innocent for the sin of his gaze.

“The waters great” Minho exclaimed, emerging from the depths of the water with a smirk.

Minho pulled Thomas in, the other boy laughing and holding onto Minho as he lied about his lack of swimming ability. The stronger boy held on to him as he swirled around the water, the current bending into the shapes of their bodies as it gravitated around its centre

Newt pulled his legs to his chest, his injured one moaning at the movement but he dismissed the pain with a grind of his teeth. He watched the two of them have fun because it was all he could do, all Thomas allowed him to do.

Thomas forgot about his lies after a few minutes, pushing away from Minho’s chest and swimming circles around him. Minho sunk further under the water, his strong arms pushing his body through the water with a practised force that existed inside everything the boy did. Newt’s eyes were so focussed on Minho and his graceful strokes that he forgot of Thomas’ existence.

That was until the boy emerged from the water and splashed him, the water forcefully heavy on his shocked body that he squealed in discomfort.

Minho turned to Newt with a raised eyebrow, “Are you alright Newt?”

This was the part where Newt would say yes and Thomas would apologise. But neither said anything because that wasn’t in the rules of the game.

The water around Thomas shone brighter than his smile.

Minho pulled himself out the water, “We should go, it’s getting late.”

It wasn’t getting late, it was getting tense and Minho didn’t like the feeling in the air.

Newt watched the water drip down Minho’s body, watched him shake the droplets from his skin with the utmost fascination. His boxers were soaked through, but Minho simply slipped on his shorts without as much as a wince.

“Here,” He said as he took in the sight of Newt’s soaked and shaking form. He bent down to Newt’s level without the patronising tone of his father or the doctors, just of the nurturing memory of their childhood that lay to rest in these very woods. Newt’s shirt was lifted over his head and Minho’s was slipped on over his pale chest, Newt silently hoping that Minho wouldn’t notice the lack of muscle or the immaturity of his childish body. If he did Minho didn’t comment, and that was as good as acceptance in Newt’s mind.

Thomas’ words pulled their gaze from one another, “Help me out the water Min,” the brunette asked from below them. His eyes were fierce and angry but they don’t seep into the sweetness of his voice.

“Take my hand Tommy,” Minho instructed, lifting the boy effortlessly from the water.

A fake wince rested heavily on Thomas’ handsome features as he cradled his left leg, the same leg Newt had hurt a year ago. “I-I think I stood on something in the water,” He cried, “It really hurts.”

Thomas is playing to win and he’s succeeding, Minho the almighty pawn and prize submitting to Thomas’ words.

“Can you walk?” Minho asks, the whole occasion finally garnished in a pretty little bow of irony as Minho holds him up like he’s fragile, like Thomas is weak and in pain and everything Newt really is.

“I-I don’t think so,” He whimpered, crocodile tears dripping down his cheeks.

Minho gave Thomas a piggyback home, Newt trailing behind with his crutches that caught on the debris of the forest floor.

“Keep the shirt,” Minho told him as they reached his house, “It looks good on you.”

Thomas yawned melodramatically to pull Minho’s attention from the blonde. Minho left with a goodbye and the promise that he’ll visit soon, he waved before he turns to the street, until all Newt can see is Thomas holding on to his back with a suffocating grip and a wide smile on his face.


	2. Playing the Fixed

He is an enigma, a rumour, a whispered name between smiling lips. Newt is everything he doesn’t want to be but that doesn’t matter because it isn’t about him, it’s about what he stands for, what he jumped for, about his limp and his crutches and the meaning behind the two.

Newt walks through the unfamiliar school halls, his books weigh his backpack down as he struggles to walk with his crutches. Nobody helps though. Their stares are bruising, their whispers arrogantly loud as they tell the tale of the boy with the limp with a fictitious exaggeration.

It’s his first day at school in years, his tutor had wished him luck and his father had patted him on the back with a cautious force. His father told him how great it would be to go to a proper school, to make friends and go outside. The man didn’t want to tell Newt he was becoming a liability and that the medical bills and tutor had emptied his bank account with a worrying speed. His father didn’t want to tell him about the rumour of attempted suicide that had spread with a keen force even in his workplace. The knives, shavers and other sharp objects had all been moved to the top shelf where Newt couldn’t reach them.

When Newt was alone he’d practice monologues, write scripts about what he’d say to his father, would write a whole novella about the truth and dedicate to Thomas, would call it ‘jump’. He’d recite the words like a prayer to himself in the cold and lonely moments before sleep, repeating it like a martyr till his throat bled raw from emotion. But then when the opportunity presented itself, when the universe granted him hope in the form of his father, it would strip his of his courage and voice leaving only an awkward silence and a dinner that tasted sour.

Newt wasn’t depressed because he was suicidal, he was depressed because his leg was broken, because it was irreversible and painful. Newt wasn’t depressed, not really, he was just angry, hopeless and arguably pessimistic. But that wasn’t his fault.

It was Thomas’.

The name was a sin to him, spoken in a subconscious growl and a harsh chuckle that belonged to its owner. The name meant to him a sense of obligation, a heavy stride and a heavier heart that weighed down his chest into the bottomless pit of stomach. Thomas knew, Newt was sure, of what he had done. Was sure the taller boy stayed up at night like Newt, drawing patterns across the ceiling in the darkness. But to Thomas the shapes where a one of beauty, one of hope, one of a deviant victory while Newt only say a smiling face that was not his own.

He makes his way to his locker, his fingers struggling with the combination. He takes out his books and lunch, prepared to spend his lunch hour alone in an abandoned classroom somewhere. But the world was laughing at his cowardice, shadowing it with the one thing Newt doesn’t dare ignore.

Minho is there, strong, handsome and so much taller. He looks at Newt for a moment, suspended in thought before he cries out a cheerful welcome and runs over to him.

Newt was striving for invisibility, for him to breeze through the school year with great grades and an unsigned yearbook where people would scratch their heads at his picture. But now with the most popular jock in school walking towards him in tribute of their shared childhood, Newt’s quite sure he’d failed. Again.

“Shucking hell!” The Asian boy cries, more man than boy now but Newt still sees his chubby cheeks and knobbly knees.

Strong arms embrace him tightly, causing him to jump in fear but the familiar smell of Minho fills his lungs until he feels like he’s melting, becoming one with the dust and the litter of the floor. He chokes back tears of memory, wanting to cling to Minho like a lifeline and tell him how wrong everything was and how he was supposed to fix it.

Newt doesn’t cry because Thomas is watching narrowly from the other side of the corridor.

Eventually the taller boy pulls away, reminiscing about trivial things but Newt isn’t listening, he fades the notes of his voice out like a beautiful melody that overbears the previous white noise, cautiously waiting for Thomas to do something only Thomas does.

“You haven’t changed one bit,” Minho tells him, looking down at him like the almighty oak that he is, taking in his tiny frame with an amused expression.

Small precise steps make their way towards them, dressed in converse that are dirtied at the souls suggesting their owner had spent a great deal of time pacing around the dirt floor of the forest.

Thomas is there.

“Doesn’t he look the same Tommy?” Minho excludes to the brunette.

Thomas doesn’t nod, he just grunts.

Minho’s bright eyes look back at him, “You’ve got your crutches again?”

The blonde nods, too weak from the conflicting forces that dare him to run far away from Thomas. But he can’t run. He can only stand in pain and discomfort as the other watches him squirm like a dying animal.

“Yeah,” Newt replies in a mere whisper, “My leg’s been acting up again.”

Small chunks of mud fall from Thomas’ shoes as Newt’s gaze gravitates towards them.

“What a shame,” Thomas tells him, his voice sickly sweet like a swollen wound that throbs in his crushing grip, “Me and Minho were just about to go running.”

Newt watches him, looks at Thomas for the first time in years, _at_ him. He sees all his beauty, the outer shell of mock humanity that, of course, shines brightly. But it’s the ugliness he sees, the tangled mess of sheer disgust that makes Newt forget about the brunettes pretty eyes and handsome face. He sees a monster, and Thomas knows this. Thomas is smiling.

“Why don’t you come along?” Minho asks in ignorance of their loathing, his voice filled with sincerity and commitment that is the epitome of the older boy.

Deep inside he knows he’ll feel powerful for refusing, knows he’ll get a heavy swell of confidence for realising he doesn’t need Minho. But he does. He needs Minho more than air, more than water. Minho symbolises everything that’s good in the world, all that remains. And Newt can’t refuse the comfort of his security.

“Yeah, uh, sure,” He tells the taller boy, closing his locker and picking his bag off the floor.

Minho takes the bag off of him, sliding it over his shoulder like it’s nothing.

They walk through the unfamiliar school halls, silent in a way that’s both comforting and suffocating, Newt’s eyes shifting between the two boys he calls his friends as if to await the moment they’ll turn and laugh at him. They don’t. All Newt can hear is the grinding of Thomas’ teeth.

Newt sits in the bleachers, alone. Thomas and Minho are running laps around him, laughing and shoving each other playfully. The sun is too hot and Newt’s lunch tastes stale but he tricks himself in believing that it’s all okay.

They’re racing now, Minho shouting go before Thomas can register it, his attention to focussed of Minho’s torso. The Asian boy doesn’t laugh anymore, but he’s smiling, god how he was smiling. Newt began to realise why he liked Minho as much as he did, watching the boy exist in his element as the entirety of nature surrounded him and cheered him on. Thomas is fast but he isn’t as smart, running without a care for his lungs causing him to choke and trip on the moist soil.

Minho, like always, wins the race. And Newt still claps although no one can hear him.

The boy stretches on the finishing line, waiting for Thomas to catch up like he always does eventually. For once Thomas isn’t angry, not even fazed, in fact his smile is far brighter than anything else that had graced him before. If Newt was an idiot, he’d say Thomas threw the race. But Newt isn’t and neither is Thomas. Minho is always the victor.

“Well done,” Newt tells him when they run over, “I guess you haven’t changed either.”

Minho laughs, “Yeah, I guess none of us are that different.”

But they were.

“Come on Min,” Thomas orders, “Let’s go shower.”

They leave him alone on the unfamiliar school field. Thomas’ eyes are narrow when he says goodbye.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s winter now. The sports field is covered with snow, the white lines and cracked surface of the ground being concealed by its cover. But Minho is still there, still smiling, still standing and kissing his pretty girlfriend.

And Newt is still sitting, still watching, still waiting. Thomas sits next to him, further away than socially accepted but the space between them is warm in a way that can sense the other’s presence.

Her name is Teresa and she is beautiful. She’s the kind of girl that meets a good man like Minho and settles down, has a nice house, pretty children and dies content with the perfection that had surrounded her since birth. Teresa is the kind of girl that smiles to Newt in the hall, the kind that gives him a pencil in class when he’s forgotten his and whispers jokes at him in class. She is the kind of girl that Minho likes, the kind that everyone likes, the kind that Newt should like. Teresa is a girl that Newt hates with all the anger and loathing in his heart, a heart he realised is filled with such emotions.

Minho is holding her like he should be, kissing her like he should, stroking her hair and swaying her like he should, like he is, like Newt dreams of every single idle moment in his day.

Teresa and Minho are a couple, the mascots of teenage love in their school.

It’s snowing now, stray snowflakes tangling into Newt’s blonde hair and surrounding the couple in a perfect border of romance.

Newt watches them and so does Thomas, still sitting, still watching, still waiting.

It’s then that Newt realises, as slight as the thought is, that although they were enemies, opponents in the game, at the same time they were equals.

He and Thomas leave the couple in the snow.

 

* * *

 

 

The night time moves like a beast, slowly but with purpose in a way that makes Newt question what’s on the other side of the treeline. Minho talks to him as they walk, holding a bottle of vodka and a bemused expression, he tells him that the night time is beautiful. Newt likes the sunset personally; he likes the array of colours that bleed through the horizon but Minho doesn’t ask him his opinion, so he doesn’t voice it.

They reach their destination, Thomas knocking on the door of the suburban house. Newt shivers from both the cold and nervous energy of his cowardice.

They’re here for a party, for music and booze and saliva covered kisses with wondering eyes. Newt is here because Minho is here and so is Thomas. Minho is here because Minho is everywhere.

A girl answers the door, pretty and small and anonymous to Newt as he brushes off her existence with a well-mannered nod of his head as he steps inside. Her house is nice, decorated walls and fragile treasures that are sure to be destroyed by the gangs of teenagers that sip endlessly and their drinks.

Minho is welcomed with open arms, Thomas with a stern hospitality and Newt with a whimper and a gulp, with a cold stare to his leg and a sad wince.

He’s left alone for a short while, both hoping and daring them to come speak to him as he drinks a soda he pretends is beer. Minho talks to his friends from track, a friendly smile on his face and a silent chuckle from the other side of the room. He is handsome, everything he’s supposed to be and Newt is quite content with just watching the other boy exist.

Thomas is glaring from his own group of haggled friends, watching Minho with eyes that question his surroundings and plan a course of action Newt’s sure will lead to the two of them alone.

When Newt’s cup empties, he doesn’t get another one.

Newt’s sitting now, his leg was aching so he decided to perch in a faraway corner where the shadows were his cover, watching the others laugh and have fun. But Minho finds him, like he always seems to do, like his light, a beacon of something Newt doesn’t dare label as hope. The other boy looks slightly intoxicated but the alcohol simply pulls his cheeks a little tighter causing Newt to marvel at his dimples.

“Are you alright?” He asks and Newt had nodded because he’d forgotten the question.

But the boy sees through his lies and hands him a bottle of beer. Newt drinks it because Minho asked him to, and the other boy laughed when he did.

It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

His company drifts away eventually, being consumed by the dark room and loud music. He locates Minho talking to his girlfriend, the two of them embraced in a kiss that flashes mercilessly through the insides of his eyelids.

Minho kisses her again when the bottle points to her, the whole room now sitting in a circle as they spin the glass around with a dazed concentration. Minho kisses a lot of girls that night, he kisses them because they ask, because they’re dared to, because they want him to and Newt can’t complain because he can relate to that fact entirely.

Thomas is sitting next to him, tense and angry as he always is. His body is curled round himself like he’s cowering, but not quite, because right in this moment Thomas looks fearless. He doesn’t see the darkness or wince at the deafening music, he just watches with a keen interest as he deciphers through their movements.

The bottle lands on Minho again and he says “dare” with the same confidence as usual. They dare him to kiss another girl, Minho doesn’t complain.

The movements of the bottle begin to blur eventually, like a whirlwind of glass that reflects his stares in a flurry of confusion.

Newt only starts listening when the bottle lands on Thomas.

Everyone is looking at him, even Minho, _especially_ Minho.

The Asian boy smiles as he sips his beer. “Truth or dare?” He asks the brunette.

Thomas doesn’t stammer. “Dare.”

The world seems to slow down, in this moment all there is Minho and Thomas, Newt as well he supposes, watching it all unfold like a narrator that’s place doesn’t stand to be biased so he shan’t. He simply watches.

Minho leans forward, only slightly. “I dare you to kiss Newt.”

The crowd gasps but all Newt sees is the three of them as a separate entity, watching, waiting, and willing them to conjoin in a mutual understanding.

Newt waits for a harsh laugh or a snide comment from Thomas, but all he gets is a set of lips that harshly push against his own.

Thomas is kissing him. Thomas is his first kiss. Thomas tastes sweet yet sharp as he kisses him, as he controls him, as he manipulates his movements with a strong hand on his head and a forceful tongue.

Thomas is his first kiss and he knows this, he loves it, like he’s tarnishing some subjective form of innocence and purity that he takes great time in tearing apart.

Newt feels soiled and warm. Thomas feels like he’s won, because he has but there’s no surprise there.

Minho looks away with sad eyes and takes a large, final sip of his beer.

In that moment time doesn’t exist, just the three of them imprisoned in the moment. They all want to say something, to prove something to the others as they move, as they still. Thomas’ movements are one of power, one of victory, one that makes him marvel at himself as he writes insults in the other’s mouth with his tongue. Newt’s reciprocation speaks of fear and uncertainty, of a rush of adrenaline and the loss of something he isn’t sure existed in the first place.

Minho says nothing. Not stop. Not continue. He just watches without his eyes.

Thomas, like always, acts first, pushing away from him so violently that Newt realises that he was relying on the other boy’s body for stability, shaking and falling as the warmth of Thomas inhospitable form leaves him lonely and embarrassed on the living room floor.

The game moves on, and Newt can still taste Thomas in his mouth.

Fate points to him with the bottle, wide-eyed and unassuming as all heads turn to him as if they realised, just now, that he exists.

“Truth or dare?” Minho asks him and Newt doesn’t want to answer because he’s scared he’ll choke.

But he does, despite himself, tone wavering. “T-Truth.”

The crowd watches him closely, forgetting the levels of alcohol in their bloodstream as he’s spotlighted by the cruel curiosity that lives inside them all.

Minho sees their desires, sees the pragmatics and sensitivities behind the words. Minho is silent.

They all blink in a synchronised fashion, waiting for a question that will release them.

Thomas, like always, is their relief.

He smiles into his words, “Why did you jump?”

Newt walks home alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a little longer than normal and for the excessive amount of time jumps, if this chapter was a little too confusing or anything, feel free to leave a comment. Thank you all so much for reading!


	3. Playing the Ordinary

Newt knows a lot of things about Sonya. He knows she burns really easily in the sun, that she believes in God but not as much as science, and that she always pulls her fringe behind her ears when she’s nervous. She’s a Taurus, her birthdays in April but she doesn’t like presents because she thinks birthdays are a commodity of commercialism. She reads big books and uses big words that create the illusion that she’s a lot smarter than she actually is. Sonya is his girlfriend of two months and Newt knows this because she had counted and would remind him of it often.

Newt knows a lot of things about Sonya, but the main and most important one was that she doesn’t love him. She liked him, appreciated him, tolerated him as an idea that she could fix because Sonya likes broken things.

And Newt knows he doesn’t love her either.

Sonya stands in his room cautiously, eyes too observant as he avoids her stare. She likes his room because it’s private and nobody else goes there, which loosely translates in her mind that she is, therefore, far superior than everyone else. Her hands pull her skirt back down to a modest length when she bends over to observe his bookshelf, as if he were going to comment crudely or make lust filled gazes at her He wouldn’t, and he didn’t, and Sonya knows his because that was why they were dating.

“You don’t have many classics,” she told him as she fingered the spines of his books with no conscience of sentimental value.

“No, I think they’re over rated.”

Sonya raises an eyebrow in disdain but decides, for once, not to comment. Newt half expects a note of comparison, but he’s quite sure Sonya had never been in a boys room before just as much as he’s sure he’d never had a girl in his.

She stands up and sits on his bed. Sonya crosses her legs whenever she sits down and raises her head as if everything else is beneath her. Her breathing shallows eventually, merging with the tense silence.

Newt looks to the floor when he feels her hand on his.

“Does it hurt?” She asks, tilting her head accusingly.

His heart stops. “Does what hurt?”

“Your leg.”

Sonya, like everyone else, likes to ask questions. Even sitting at school strangers would probe him of his limp, their stares forcefully dying to crack open his skull to read the truth. They wanted him to tell them that he had jumped, that he was depressed and that he hated everything.

And Newt couldn’t say that because that was the truth and he didn’t like being right.

He drops the topic and her eyes and the girl seems to understand this.

A few more beats of silence is all that separates the two, Newt finally settling into the mattress with a familiar silence. But Sonya breaks it with her words.

“Kiss me,” she says, the statement being both a demand and a theoretical idea that she decides to voice.

Newt, like always, is silent in reply.

Her blues eyes turn to him.

“Kiss me,” she repeats, punctuating the statement with her soft lips on his.

Sonya tastes like bubble-gum and cherry flavoured lip balm, she tastes so sweet it turns sour in his mouth. She doesn’t close her eyes, keeping them open to watch him, take note of his reactions so she can go home and scribble out bar charts and findings about what makes Newt tick.

Newt closes his eyes, because that makes the pretending easier.

Her hand trails away from his, resting for a moment on his wrist before she delves even further with a pressuring grip. The hands are too small, too soft and too warm, and they dance across his skin like a fury or force that sullies his territories. They sink deeper and deeper into his comforts, down his torso that echoes his heart beat hurriedly.

Finally, they rest, sensation heavy on his hip before it falls suddenly with too much confidence into his lap. Sonya is holding his crotch and he is pushing her away.

Sonya doesn’t fall, just sways, looking both confused and clarified as she wipes the saliva form her perfectly chapped lips.

She looks sorry, but only for a moment. “This isn’t working, is it?”

“No,” he tells her.

“So what now?”

Newt looks at her, watches her tuck her hair behind her ear and watches it fall back down to cover her face.

“I don’t know,” he replies honestly.

Sonya stands up, lips reciting her practised monologues of independence that they both know will fall idly on his ears.

She turns to him with a mournful expression, “I think you need to get your priorities straight, Isaac.”

Sonya always used his full name, ever since their biology teacher had called it out on the register. She seemed to think it gave her a sense of righteousness, it didn’t. Not many things looked righteous on a girl that dots her ‘i’s’ with hearts and reads the dictionary in her lunch break.

“I’m sorry,” She tells him, but she isn’t and he’s quite content with that reality.

Her cardigan is lifted from the bed with steady hands as she straightens down her skirt and fixes her fringe in the mirror. She turns to the door with a humoured smile, “I really thought we’d get on you know.” Newt almost feels sorry for her, but then she opens her mouth again. “I mean, we’re both honour roll students and averagely good-looking. But I guess,” She chokes melodramatically, “I guess I was wrong.”

Newt nods even though he isn’t supposed too. She closes the door with a polite volume and he can hear her say goodbye to his father in the hall.

He’s let with the fading feeling or normality that turns into hollowness, the epitome of everything he had become.

Minho arrives punctually at seven o’clock tat night, biting his lip and the physics equation that Newt had explained dozens of times, the skin tearing and bleeding at the action.

“Did you sleep with her?” He asked, gaze awkwardly meeting his in the warm lighting of his room.

A lie forms on his tongue, but instead of releasing it like he should, he swallows it back down. The harsh texture of the words scratch at his throat.

“No,” he tells him.

Minho nods with a small smile, a barely noticeable blush on his cheeks. “Good.”

 

* * *

 

Newt turns seventeen that summer, he wakes up at midnight on the dot, the sliver of moonlight announcing itself through his open window until all he sees his face in the mirror. He still looks like a child, still so thin and so fragile as if he would break if he stared at himself too long. He stares back at the face that stares at him, waiting for an answer or a thought to make the whole occasion seem more meaningful. But his mind is blank. He falls back to sleep and dreams of the forest and the tumbling smash of something that feels a lot like pain and a lot like happiness.

His father gets him a book of classic poems and he thanks him with a brief hug. He tries to retreat to his bedroom but his father suggests he sits outside in the summer air. Newt looks down at his pale and sickly skin and agrees.

The sunlight burns his eyes.

Minho turns up later, Newt opening the door to see him standing there, handsome and smiling holding a wrapped present. They go up to Newt’s room and sit on his bed, the sunlight gracing Minho’s face as he grins and laughs. The blonde smiles for the first time in a while, the tight alien pull a tearing agony that makes Minho’s presence seem all the more important.

“It’s not much,” Minho tells him as he hands over the present.

The wrapping paper is torn, a patchwork of various patterns, one of which has the phrase ‘Merry Christmas’ wrote on it. The tape almost laminates the gift causing Newt to scratch and tear and stray pieces hoping it will unravel in his hands. Minho takes his hands into his, grip ghosting across his skin as he tears the covering apart into small flecks of paper that litter Newt’s mattress. All Newt sees is Minho’s hands, only hears the prayers that will Minho to stay like this, close and tangible and his. But like every other time, the hands leave him to shiver alone.

“I hope you like it,” He smiles.

Above the tangled mess of wrapping paper sits a snow globe. Trapped inside the glass is a forest, the tress crooked and dirtied by the season that strips it off its leaves and warmth, leaving what it always does, a beauty of scenery. Newt shakes the glass, the autumn leaves lifting from the forest floor and floating, defying the laws that will them to fall until they cloud the tree in a cover of oranges and yellows. Eventually the leaves fall to the bottom of the snow globe, but Newt’s in control for once and he lifts them to their rightful place, repeating the gesture over and over again.

“It’s beautiful,” He tells Minho because it really is; it’s them, everything they were and everything they should be now. Newt meets Minho’s eyes through the other side of the snow globe, his handsome face highlighted in gold.

“I saw it in the shop,” The boy smiles, “And it reminded me of you.”

Newt stuck in the limbo of wanting to cry and laugh, so he lets out a choking sound that’s a combination of the two.

“I love it,” he whispers.

 ' _I love you’_ , he thinks.

 

* * *

 

Thomas doesn’t come to school on Monday, or on Tuesday. In fact it takes until Friday before Newt asks Minho where he is.

“I don’t know,” was his reply, punctuated with a bite of his lip as he walked away.

That Saturday someone rings the doorbell at seven in the morning, the voice sombre and hushed as it speaks to his father. Newt sneaks out of bed, his limp ghosting across the cold wooden floor as he watches the exchange.

A lady stands in the doorway, eyes bloodshot but posture determined as she nods her head methodically and pulls her un-brushed hair out of her eyes. She’s Thomas’ aunt and she’s calling his house at seven in the morning and crying.

Newt doesn’t need to ask before he figures it out.

The following Saturday his dad drives him to church, fussing over his suit and cursing at the weather. It’s raining like it’s supposed to be, as if the celestial being that controlled such a thing was pitying them with a sadistic drizzle of rain.

Newt’s father leaves him to shake hands with strangers and pass on condolences, so he looks at the floor and then the rain and the puddles that surrounded them all. The air smells dry and humid.

All the faces are strangers to him, a few of them recognisable from their dark hair and dark eyes that reminds him so much of Thomas. Newt’s eyes finally rest on Minho’s in the crowd.

Minho looks good in black, but Minho looks good in everything so he isn’t surprised.

Suddenly the wind picks up, a quiet whistle that violently shakes the leaves from the trees. The blonde watches them fall, watches the leaves float to the ground in sorrow, sinking into the puddles and diapering from sight.

Minho’s gone when he turns back round.

A stranger announces the ceremony has begun, so all cold bodies slowly make their ways to unforgiving warmth of the church.

Thomas is there, crooked and small and insignificantly significant in the eyes of the room. He stands at the front of the church, crying. Newt knows it’s morbid, especially on such an occasion like this, but he thinks Thomas is much friendlier when he cries. The brunettes back quivers, watching the altar with a pained fascination.

Newt decides he likes it when Thomas cries.

The two caskets look so beautiful in the artificial light, adorned with flowers like an offering to the universe.

When the ceremony starts Newt sits at the back, watching the family members exaggerate about how wonderful the two of them were, a happy couple, role-models to their siblings and how perfect they were as parents.

Thomas sobs at the last line, and Newt can hear him from all the way at the back.

Minho walks over to the crying boy, holding him and whispering reassurances that he’d always be there and that he was never going to leave.

Newt doesn’t stand up when they sing the prayer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little note to thank you all for the kudos and the comment and everything, your support not only inspires me but REALLY surprises me, thank you so much!


	4. Playing the Competent

Minho is their champion, their grace, their poster child for achievement. They scream congratulations at him when the whistle blows, the whole team landing in a pile with a smiling Minho at the bottom of them. Newt stands too, as expected, snapping out of his confused daze and smiling (because Minho was, and if Minho was anything at all he was the perfect example to follow.) The blonde doesn’t know anything about sports, he just knows it involves a lot of running and throwing, a lot of movement that blur into a flurry of confusion when his attention drifts. He does however know that Minho is very good at sports, the cheerleaders, teachers and Thomas would remind him of it often.

After the game a man in a suit far too formal for such an occasion had shook Minho’s hand, the young athlete politely muttering out nonsense that Newt couldn’t hear from so far away.

“This is the start of something brilliant!” He told them later, Thomas pulling him into a hug and whispering praises in his ear while Newt had swayed in the non-existent breeze.

This was a time of celebration, at least that’s what Minho told him, reminding him to attend his house party in the early hours of the morning.

Newt’s father was reluctant to let him leave.

“It’ll be dark,” He told his son, watching the small blonde button up his coat in the mirror.

Newt caught his gaze in the reflection, “Yeah.”

He nodded his head and reached for the door, his father’s strong grip pulling him back.

“I don’t think you should go,” His father admitted, but the promise of Minho and the open door was far louder and more convincing.

“It’ll be fine,” Newt replied, words being lost in the wind.

His father doesn’t let go, so the boy shakes him off.

“Newt?”

He turns around to see his father, tired and afraid in the doorway.

“What?” He questions.

The older man swallows. “Don’t walk home alone.”

The door is closed and the night becomes silent, so Newt follows the dim trail of streetlights that litter the otherwise natural landscape. His footsteps are quiet as he walks, his brain leading him to the cherished location of Minho. He doesn’t take the shortcut, instead he follows the lit pavement that he used to follow when walking to school, to Minho, knocking on the boy’s door where he’d see Thomas and the three of them would walk as one.

Newt tried to remember a time where Thomas liked him, or failing that at least tolerated him. He remembers briefly a few school trips or after school activities where it was just him and Thomas, the brunette smiling and whispering secrets in his ear. It seemed too long ago, the memories hazy and cluttered in a way that suggested Newt had implanted them in his own subconscious, tricking himself with daydreams where Thomas was something that was not himself.

He remembered Thomas pushing him over in the playground and he remembered Thomas testing out Chinese burns on his wrist. He remembered Thomas dismissing his existence when he offered the brunette a ride home with his dad, Thomas glaring at him as they drove off, leaving him alone and waiting for his parents that rarely showed. He remembered going round Thomas house and wincing at the unwashed dishes, the holes on the walls and the smell of damp in the bedrooms. He remembered Thomas’ dad coming home drunk and dragging Thomas out the room.

He remembered Thomas’ bruises the next morning, he remembered because the boy had replicated them on Newt’s skin with an imitated anger and a cruel smile.

Newt arrives at Minho’s door suddenly, his legs leading him there by instinct.

The door’s open in invitation, wide and beckoning with groups of teenagers embracing and kissing and drinking. They smell of smoke, alcohol and desire that both repulses him and draws him into to the mock warmth of Minho’s home. No face looks familiar and his presence is far too forgettable to spare a second glace so Newt finds himself doing what he always does, he searches for Minho.

He manages to elbow the few lone teenagers that pause as obstacles in his path to the living room, eyes wide and tearing up with the haze of foreign smoke.

Thomas is there like always, his dark eyes meeting his for the first time in what seems like forever. Newt supposes it has been a forever, a forever of depression and worthlessness, only differing in Thomas’ retribution of self-fulfillment. 

The boy does not glare but he doesn’t wave. Thomas does what he always does, watches, like the silent and omnipotent narrator that waits keenly for Newt to fall apart. And he will, that Newt’s sure of, fall apart as a mess of fear and self-loathing as Thomas watches the puddle of his misery drip further toward the soles of his shoes.

He and Thomas are the only sober ones in the room.                                                                                                                                              

The blonde prepares to flee from the strengthening power in Thomas stare, being stopped only by a manicured hand on his shoulder and a high pitched “Newt!”

It’s Teresa.

She looks both pretty and disheveled, her eyeliner is streaked down her face and the remnants of her makeup have mixed with the sweat of her dancing. She’s lucky enough to be naturally beautiful, because if it were anyone else she’d look messy and dirty. Teresa looks as pretty as ever.

“Have you seen Minho?” She asks and Newt chokes back a repetition of the same question.

She leans further against him as if to hear him above the music, “He isn’t with you?”

Her brown hair tickles his arm as she shakes her head. “I haven’t seen him all night.”

Teresa doesn’t leave like he expects her to, instead hanging off his arm with a worrying expression.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” She whispers with a smile.

If Newt were any more socially constipated than he was, he’d say Teresa was coming on to him. But there were times when she’d join the three of them for lunch or sit next to Newt on the bleachers watching Minho run, that he was sure Teresa understood him, as slight as the feeling was.

Newt doesn’t reply because there’s nothing he can say to make the whole situation easier to stomach.

Teresa however, doesn’t seem to note his silence. “Why don’t you ask him to dance?”

He turns expecting Minho, strong and throwing Newt a smirk or a sly expression.

But he doesn’t.

He just sees Thomas.

“I think he likes you back,” She whispers. Thomas glares at their close proximity. “He’s always watching you.”

A part of Newt wants to slap her, force her to sober up and face the reality of the situation, to politely explain that Thomas was evil and vile and every synonym in the thesaurus that could associate with such disgust. He wants Teresa to see him, for everyone to see him, for what he truly was. He’d draw diagrams, would write papers, would stay up every night for the rest of eternity just dissecting his character and hypothesising why such a thing as Thomas could exist. Because he shouldn’t. People like Thomas shouldn’t exist and sometimes Newt didn’t think he did, thought maybe Thomas was just the personification for every element of evil and fear that riddled his imagination. Then he thought it was placing far more intelligence on himself to create the perfect antagonist, thought it too cowardly to blame everything on that one fact.

If there was one thing Newt was sure of, it was that Thomas hated him. That above everything else was the sole purpose for his existence.

“I don’t like Thomas,” He tells her with as much conviction as he can muster in his dazed state.

Teresa has the audacity to laugh.

“Of course you don’t,” She moves her hand off his shoulder, swallowed by the crowd that accepts her as the simple beautiful girl that she is.

Newt shakes off her existence like a simple apparition in the oblivion of tightly pressed bodies and blaring music, searching each room for Minho. He isn’t in the kitchen, the garden, the dining room or even in the bathroom. He looks up at his last remaining option, the staircase. The upstairs is roped off with a bit of string and a sign reading ‘No Entry’ in Minho’s clumsy hand writing. He treasures the paper carefully in his hands as he ignores its instruction, tiptoeing up the stairs and opening Minho’s bedroom door.

It’s dark, but light enough to create the shadows of shapes and skin in the moonlight. At first he tells himself they are strangers, that the naked skin is anonymously unfamiliar. But there is that distinct scar on the boy’s back that tells him it’s Minho.

He remembered Minho holding his hand and running through the forest, tripping over fallen branches and stones that littered their path. He hadn’t remembered what they running towards or from, just that it was one of the few and treasured moments of silence just for them, alone and wandering _together_. Newt remembered his little still healthy legs stopping next to Minho’ and the stray rabid dog in their path. It ran at them, faster than they could ever hope to be, teeth bared and barking. Minho pushed him away, shielding his body with his own as the dog bit at his back with sharpened teeth, exaggerated by the nightmarish nature of their childish imaginations.  Minho eventually got up and hit the dog with a large thorny stick and screamed, Newt watching nature shiver at his heroics. The doctor gave him a shot and a sticker, telling Minho that it would scar but he could always remember his bravery.

Now the teeth marks were nothing but faded etches on his hip bone and a distant memory that Newt would repeat and treasure so deeply within his consciousness. The teeth marks were now overpowered by the fresh and bleeding ones on his neck that were healed with clumsy kisses and smudged lip stick.

Newt watched them have sex, the whole situation not perverted or led with the teenage desire to fuck and ruin and rut at every breathing body around them. Newt watched his world fall apart and he did so unfearfully, granting himself the permission to scowl and curse at the moaning body beneath Minho’s as he fucked into her mass relentlessly.

She was not him, not Thomas and not Teresa. She was a stranger, and that fact both healed and worsened the pain like a fresh salt on his wounds.

His presence seems to remind the universe of his existence, drawn to the sinking disgust of anger that emitted from his being.

“Newt?” Minho asks, juxtaposing his previous moans of pleasure to a sombre voice of disappointment.

Newt leaves before he can say anything else, stumbling down the staircase and tearing apart the sign. His feet lead him to the garden, the silent comfort of nature dulling the frustration insignificantly. The concrete is cold on his backside, the wind chilling him in small waves of fatigue as the moon casts its shadows of light onto him and the empty space around him. It feels like he’s choking, like he’s dying and being reincarnated at the same time, leaving him as the confused nothingness that is not replied to by the universe.

A shadow casts itself on to his small form, looming over him like an almighty oak and Newt the helpless forest creature that just waits for the tree to fall.

“What happened?” Thomas asks, calm and void of any conflicts, just a sincerity that parts the breeze with its sound.

Newt wraps his arms around himself. “He was fucking her,” He chokes out.

Thomas sits next to him of the floor, their heights levelling with their close proximity. He doesn’t say anything, silent in a way that only Thomas can be, mulling the words over observantly as he searches through conclusions and plans the next step. The blonde was sure Thomas won because of his stoic intelligence, the other boy’s passion to simply react instead of cry or scream or fall into a pit of self-loathing. Thomas was always so much stronger than him.

There is no fatherly advice or a recited quote from a retired politician, just Thomas handing him a beer and then another, and another until Newt’s mouth tastes stale with intoxicants.

His head is throbbing and Newt’s logistics are demanding he throw up, for him to push Thomas away and empty the evidence of the night onto his lap and the green grass. But he doesn’t, because if Newt is anything it’s illogical.

Thomas hands him another, moving closer and stroking the hair out of his face. Thomas hands him another, and smiles at the absence in his eyes. Thomas hands him another, and pulls him onto his feet as he moves in closer.

His brunette hair mixes with Newt’s, “I think you should go home,” he suggests like it’s anything but a constant fact that they are both aware of.

Thomas picks up the last bottle of alcohol, his hand steadily sober as he pushes it to Newt’s lips and forces him to swallow it.

Newt chokes and Thomas shushes him. “Let me walk you home,” He proposes as he holds the drunken boy up, leading him to the front door and shielding him from the mass of bodies in the house.

Teresa winks at him, at least he thinks he thinks it’s her, the universe around him blurring into colours and flashes and loud sounds.

The cold night air helps settle his stomach. He tries to thank Thomas and laugh at the irony of the moment, but the universe or Thomas doesn’t dictate him to do so, Newt’s quite sure he can separate the meaning between the two anymore.

Thomas’ feet are steadily wary as he pulls him along, Newt mimicking his path with a drunken awkwardness as he sway and stumbles more than usual. The brunette keeps checking behind them, taking Newt’s hand and leading them down a hooded pathway were the streetlights become sparse before being swallowed up by the darkness.

Newt wants to tell Thomas he’s gone the wrong way, but he can’t. Thomas is in control and he wills himself ignorantly to trust the other boy’s soberness.

Even in his drunken mind set, Newt can still recognise the path. His young footsteps are still engraved in the floor, tattooing the nature beneath his feet of the essence of his existence. The forest floor is welcoming him home to his rightful place. The owls are hooting and the trees sway soundly in the familiar symphony of nature. He laughs, smiles, stumbles around and holds onto the trees that are blackened with the smoke of pollution and the etchings of new memories that Newt wasn’t present for. His only sense of direction is Thomas, who walks in front of him with the silent steps of a predator that is unapologetic to the nature that hisses at his return.

The beeping in Newt’s ear turns to a deafening screech of unattainable noise that exists only within his mind. He stops and holds his knees, willing for the pain to leave him to mourn the resting place of his childhood happiness. A red squirrel tilts its head at him, making him question if he was entirely sane or present inside his own head, but the reflected light of its dirtied fur is far too detailed for his current composure to muster. Its brown eyes watch him, squeaking and scurrying around him once, before fleeing frightfully up the large oak tree that steadies his confused body.

Thomas isn’t there when he looks up, Newt looking around to search for the older boy.

Suddenly there’s a sharp crushing pain on his back, thrusting him forward until he can taste the dirt and the remnants of rain that drowns the soil. He’s sees a darkness, he hears a shuffle, he feels a hand pulling him over and throwing him onto his back.

Thomas is there, above him, bestial and animalistic with livid eyes that leave him with no choice but to submit.

Pain again, on his back, on his leg, on his collarbone, littering across his form like tiny kisses with the desire for destruction.

Thomas is hurting him and he’s scared, they both are.

Thomas is crying and he is weak.

“I hate you,” he cries, sound consumed by snot and tears and anger and everything that Thomas had amounted to.

It hurts.

“I hate you!”

He’s bleeding.

“I hate you!”

His tears mix with Thomas’ on his chest, the confused effects of sudden violence and emotion in what Newt assumes to be the most unconventional of heart to hearts.

The weight above him quivers, stumbling out sounds that are not sorry only bemused, as if they wanted to take a subjective outlook of their current predicament before agreeing with the values and hitting him again.

Hands, clutching hands, fisted hands, and open hands caress him, dancing and laughing in a modest symphony of the forest. Thomas is paining a masterpiece, a morbid rainbow of greens and purples that seems to both tear him a part and stitch him back together.

It is beautiful because it hurts and because it doesn’t look like it’s going to end.

“I hate you,” Thomas whispers.

Newt tries to move but his shoulders are pinned down by his drunken composure and Thomas’ authority.

“Why couldn’t it have been you?” Thomas asks him, “Why couldn’t you have died instead of them?”

He’s choking, gargling, it sounds like he’s drowning, and maybe he is, and maybe Newt will watch.

Thomas’ eyes are beautifully dark in the moonlight, “You ruined everything.”

A strong grip cuts off Newt’s breathing.

“He was mine, he _is_ mine and _you’re_ taking him away from me.”

Thomas hands strangle him so violently that Newt’s vision blurs.

“You should have just died when you jumped.”

The grip loosened.

“Why didn’t you just die?”

There is a moment that feels like clarity. It is silent like every important moment is, pausing and gesturing for them to sink up the scenery, the temperature, the uneasiness of the forest and the way the other looks when they cry.

There is a moment where Newt’s not quite sure what is real anymore, if this is happening, if this exists, if he exists. Newt’s quite sure his mind will sober up and he’ll find himself in a well-lit place with a helping stranger and a pile of sick to his right. He is sure he’ll wake up and feel enlightened, but he won’t and he doesn’t because there is only light in the darkness.

Thomas picks up a rock, sharp heavy and dirty, the bugs that lived underneath it cry out from the soil, and Thomas casts his shadow over every one.

There is a moment, the moment where Thomas raises the rock above his head that he is enlightened. In this moment Newt realises he’s going to die, that Thomas is going to kill him.

Newt’s quite sure they’ll find his body, his head caved in, skull a shell of spluttered organs that sullies the forest floor. They will find his bruised and unmoving body, snap pictures of the blood soaked rock and dress him in a quilt. His father will identify his body, perhaps move to France when the trial ends and start drinking because that’s what was expected of him, and Newt’s father likes meeting expectations.

They will know that Thomas killed him, witnesses pointing fingers and allegations at the brunette boy with the unapologetic eye that doesn’t blink as often as it should. They’ll give Thomas a life sentence that translates into ten years because Thomas is smart. They’ll try and break him in prison, will see the bright absence of light in his eyes and vow to tear him apart. But Thomas won’t crack because that was defying there expectations, and Thomas loves to do that.

Newt’s body would be so ugly in death, maybe he’ll begin to rot before they find him, a wild animal attracted to his stench until they begin to eat him, spitting him back out because he is far too putrid and chemical for their tastes.

Thomas arms shake while he holds the rock.

The drunken part of Newt’s mind wants to count him down, ask Thomas to hurry up because his bones are beginning to chill and his blood is merging with the soil.

But Thomas defies his expectations, like he often does, throwing the rock into the forest, disturbing a nest of hibernating animals.

Suddenly the weight is gone and Newt’s vision begins to clear, but Thomas takes it away with his violence and punches him, hard and mercilessly in the face.

He tastes the dirt again, mixing with the metallic taste of blood.

“Just fucking die,” the voice tells him.

Thomas’ steps sound faintly doe like in his fading consciousness.

 

* * *

 

 

His skin is a tapestry of destruction. He sees his bruises through the bath water, blurring ripples across the dirtied water until all that’s left is the stillness that is himself. The water grows cold but he doesn’t move, just watches, marvels at the sensation of feeling numb.

“Are you alright?” His father asks from the other side of the door.

Newt nods in reply, forgetting that his father can’t see him.

He supposes the man is checking to see if he’s drowned himself, cut himself, murdered himself in the bathtub leaving an apology written in crimson. His father was always one for romance, the older man seeing the beauty behind the things Newt was sure held none, but Newt was a cynic so he can’t disprove the man’s faith.

A small cloud of blood forms in the water, Newt looking down as if to check he hadn’t killed himself, taking a deep breath before releasing it with the realisation that he is very much alive.

They found him in the woods. He was cold, he was alone, and he was beaten bloody. His father called the police when the night reached its peak, men with torches and barking dogs being led to him by the description of a pale, frail, breakable little boy.

“What happened?” One of the men had asked, Newt tilting his head in curiosity of sound, licking his cracked and bloodied lips.

The lie had formed easily, “I don’t know.” Then he had thrown up in the constable’s lap.

They pumped the alcohol out of his stomach, checked his bones for fractures and assault of a more sinister nature, reaching the improbable conclusion that although he looked awful, he was fine.

His father called a lot of people on the phone when he was discharged, first being the school to inform them that Newt wouldn’t be returning for a while due to his injuries. Newt was fine, he could walk just a terribly as before.

The second phone call had been to Minho’s parents, a loud and vicious tone being spoken to the small and apologetic whisper at the other side of the line. Minho was grounded, fated to never throw a party again, stripping him of his athletic privileges until Newt was healed.

Thomas wasn’t called because everyone was sure that Thomas was innocent, including Newt. He didn’t hear from the brunette, would have almost forgotten about him if it weren’t for the bruises and the pain and the dull reminder of Thomas’ presence that was far louder than a whisper.

“Newt?” His father calls again, and he finds himself sinking further into the water, dipping into the sensation of cold.

The light underneath the door flickers with the presence of another.

“Newt, your friends here.”

For a moment Newt thinks its Thomas, tries to match the shadow to one of a feline grace and a bouncy step, a presence that lacks the stumbling limp of his own and replaces it forcefully with elegance and grace.

But it isn’t, he knows it isn’t. Thomas would gain nothing from being here.

“Newt?”

The water is heavy on his bruised frame.

“I’m coming,” He calls back, voice a mere echo of hostility and pain.

Flickering shadows part modestly for the sound of the water dripping from Newt’s body, leaving only a slatted light that casts itself on his wet feet. The trail of his footsteps litter the floor with the possibility of accident, covering the floor in a slippery layer of dirty water that reflects his glares right back at him.

Newt dresses in a simple t-shirt and boxers, his senses complaining at the strain of dressing himself.

He misses (however narrow it may be) the puddle of water, making his way to the door in one piece (however small the piece may be).

His hair drips droplets that slide down his spine, chilling his form all over again. He reaches for the door handle, steady and uncaring as he always is.

It’s Minho he sees on the other side, his beauty too bright and painful in the light of the hallway. He’s smiling, though this time it’s far sadder.

“How are you feeling?” He asks.

Newt doesn’t nod, doesn’t reply, just blinks at the boy he’s sure is an apparition or a trick of the light.

The Asian boy shuffles awkwardly, “I heard what happened, Thomas told me. I can’t believe it.” He shakes his head. “But you’re alright though, right?”

Newt shivers from the cold loss of territory, Minho holding his arm and leading him to a place with no light.

It’s only when Newt’s backside makes contact with the mattress is he aware it is his room and his bed, the smell of him on the sheets and his memories that litter across the floor.

“Your cold,” Minho comments airily like a brief trail of thought that’s not important enough to be dignified with a response.

In the darkness Newt watches the older, taller and handsomer boy sit below him on his knees as he holds him. It seems like a tease of desire, like a shitty and unfulfilling re-enactment of his dreams where Minho would kiss him, or look at him, or just _be_ there. Because this isn’t romantic, this isn’t fulfilling, there is no heart swelling Hollywood moment where Minho tells him he loves him.

It is dark and not light, they’re apart and not together, and there is sinking and hollow felling in Newt’s gut where there should be love.

“Lie down,” Minho tells him and he does because there’s nothing else to say or do.

Minho lies next to him in the darkness.

It’s a while before he speaks again.

“I’m sorry,” Minho says.

“Why?” Sorry I came? Sorry I left? Sorry I watched while everything fell apart? Sorry I enjoyed it as much as I did.

“For you walking in on me and… her.”

Minho isn’t sorry he fucked a girl, he isn’t sorry he cheated on his girlfriend, Minho’s just sorry he got caught.

The older boy’s eyelashes cast shadows on his cheekbones. Minho is beautiful.

Acceptance gets caught in Newt’s throat, choking like bile that wants to both release itself openly and sink further into the subconscious sensation of his body.

Newt’s hands fix the hemline of Minho’s shirt, restoring the perfection that should have existed as a constant.

“Do you love her?”

Minho blinks, “What?”

“Do love her?” Newt repeats.

“Teresa?”

“No. The girl at the party.”

Minho searches for an answer in a place where there are none.

“No,” he relies honestly.  “Why do you ask?”

Newt retracts his hands, “No reason.”

Silence falls again and it lessens the dark ignorance that settled before, the misery floating through the air like dust. And in this lightness Newt sees the snow globe.

“Do you remember this?” Newt asks the boy as he picks it up, steadying his hold so the landscape remains just as still as before.

Minho takes it from his hands, “Of course I do.”

He shakes the snow globe, the golds dim and the leaves frail skeletons.

They are beautiful, it is beautiful, everything feels very beautiful and romantic and Newt doesn’t like that.

“That’s the best present I ever got,” He tells the other and himself and the space between them both.

Minho smiles, “That’s because it’s from me.”

His smile fades eventual, falling into a slumber that starves Newt of the shine in his eyes.

Newt almost kisses him, almost. He feels perverted and wrong and disgusting, but he always does so he doubts he’ll notice the difference. His body leans into the sensation and promise of clarity, but he is strong enough to reject the sensation.

He falls asleep to the lullaby of Minho’s snores at the soft curves of his face as he exists, on his bed like an imprint of something that always was there.

 _“I love you,”_ He tells the unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a little longer than I wanted it to be but there was a lot of stuff to fit in, sorry it took a little longer than usual. Once again, thank you for all the kudos and comments and hits, numbers aren't everything, but you all never fail to make my day.


	5. Playing The Flawed

For once the world is void of worry, if only for tonight. Newt waits outside the club alone with dry eyes and the promise of new opportunities on the horizon. The bouncer looks him up and down, obviously not convinced of his legitimate id that doesn’t excuse his baby face and childlike body.

“Eighteen?” The man asks, voice gruff and airily casual like the breeze that chills them both.

Newt nods because that was all he could do, the man humouring his existence as he gestures him inside.

The air of the club is dense and smells of sweat and bodies and fruit flavoured alcohol that flavours the pouted lips of the crowd. Newt was never one for clubbing, barely could withhold a social life but curiosity and the thirst for rebellion had led him to the only gay club he could find in his area. Before he left the house, waiting for his dad to fall asleep at his routine ten o’clock, he looked in the mirror. His questioned his attire, the pragmatics behind such a childish burst for attention and Newt asked himself why he was going, and the answer had been silent.

He translated the silence as an opportunity for noise.

Tightly pressed bodies move against him, some hands holding him while others punch him away. Newt finds himself in the sparsely populated bar with spare seats and a bartender that doesn’t ask for id.

This was where he first saw him.

The man is relatively handsome, far older but his eyes hinted of a darker sense of intelligence. Throughout the night he moved closer, slowly moving towards the blonde like a hunter who did not think to silence his steps, instead cornering the blonde with the one thing he knew the other craved, attention.

“Are you alone?” The man asks above the music, face manipulating a look Newt’s sure he stole from a gentleman.

He finds himself nodding, feet tapping the legs of the stool trying desperately to reach the floor before failing.

The man moves in closer, “What you drinking?”

Newt tells the man to order him a rum and coke because the only moderately sophisticated drink he can think of off the top of his head. The man doesn’t seem to be listening, his gaze too focussed on the turned up hem line of Newt’s shirt.

The bartender hands Newt the drink and he gulps it down in one drawn out sip that floods his throat with a burning warmth.

“What’s your name?” The stranger asks, his hand ghosting across his thigh.

There is a deafening thud of music and a dimming of the lights that moves with the alcohol to create a sense of adventure. Newt feels like he’s in charge, like he’s prepared to soil the once cherished grounds of his purity for a bearded stranger that smells of tobacco and looks at him like a meal he’s take great enjoyment in tearing apart.

Newt feels vulnerable yet empowered causing him to rest his hand above the strangers and move in closer.

“Kiss me,” He tells the man, and the stranger does so with the practised ease of a man that comes here often.

The thudding of his heart and the deaf numbness in ears tricks Newt into believing he likes this, that him and the strange man are meant to be and the fate of the world that once punished him has now rewarded him with the opportunity for retribution.

Through the taste of stale cigarettes and the vulgar sensation of the man’s tongue, Newt catches his reflection of his glass in the corner of his eye, and he asks himself what he wants. The answer is the clarified sound of lust and force of body that tightens his logistics into asphyxiation.

The stranger moves his hand through Newt’s hair, the other across his thigh likes he’s preparing him with hinted whispers over intentions that aren’t as pure as first perceived.

Newt pulls away first.

“Are you sure you’re eighteen?” The man asks him, and Newt nods because it’s both the truth and the needed reply for such a question.

A waved signal to the bartender results in another, far more alcoholic drink in Newt’s hand. He catches his reflection in the clear liquid and he asks himself what he wants.

 _‘To forget,’_ is his reply, so he downs the drink and grabs the man’s hand, losing himself in the feeling of the music and unfamiliar hands on his body.

They dance together, arms pulling him away from the stranger and passing him back, assaulting him with the attention of the room that reads his slightly tipsy expression as a means of release and easy persuasion.

The man tells him he’s beautiful, tells him he _needs_ him and that everyone’s watching him. Newt doesn’t believe him, but he likes to pretend he does. He’s far more content with a rutting against a stranger who plays to his needs and insecurities, liking that the stranger had the intelligence to recognise the intentions of the night as a game of pretend. Newt is playing the willing virginal whore and the man is the hero who pushes away offending hands and prepares to distort his reality.

Time loses its meaning eventually, blurring into movements and blurs and hands until he realises he’s outside, pushed against a wall and with the same man sucking on his neck and demanding a reward for his good deeds.

“Come back to mine,” He tells the boy, hoodie lopsided on his shoulder and lips swollen with the bruising presence of the stranger. “I’ve got a house to myself, a bottle of wine. I’d treat you right baby, I’d go nice and slow, faster if you want.”

The man moves away from his body with a smile, “I’ll make you fall in love with it.”

It’s then that Newt catches his reflection in the other man’s eyes and while looking at the love bites on his neck and the vulnerability of his posture, Newt asks himself what he wants.

 _‘Not him’,_ his mind tells him, the silent indent of Minho on his mind punctuates his conclusion with a heavy swell of independence.

“No,” Newt tells him, sobering up with reality that is more distorted than he remembered it being.

He doesn’t listen to the man call after him as he walks away, wrapping his hoodie tighter around himself as he shadows the pavement with his steady posture. Newt realises he’s smiling, the pull painfully unfamiliar on his lips. He’s never felt so weak and this strengthens his steps, his vulnerabilities defining the truths of his space until he becomes conscious. He is hopelessly romantic and petty and broken, but he is at peace with that, if only for tonight.

His steps lead him home, to the forest, following the littered footsteps of months ago, passing the crushed pile of leaves shaped like him and Thomas. There is no wildlife watching him today, a few bats fly above him but they don’t stop. Newt is alone with just the forest as his company.

The ghost of his childhood stalks him, waving its chubby hands at Newt as it runs before him, legs strong and healthy. Newt follows the apparition of course, swaying through the trees and crushing fallen branches beneath his feet. He walks past the pond that is iced over for winter, strokes the large oak tree as he parts with it once more before he stops, the ghost of himself fleeing too fast for him to catch up.

It’s then that Newt looks up at the treehouse.

The structure is just as fragile as before, the old mismatched pieces of wood covered in rot and moss that blends into the leafless tree it holds to. It looks so familiar, like the universe had resurrected the motif of his happiness and distain into the embodiment of his memories. The only thing that looks new is the ladder, fresh wood that is weathered with years of open exposure, forced together by awkwardly placed nails.

Newt hold on to the ladder, shakes it and waits for it to fall or smash against the earth in slinters that will pierce at his skin. But the ladder is stable, holding together and cursing quietly at his actions.

He looks up again and this time he sees the faint outline of a person in the fluttering light of a torch.

He grabs the ladder again, placing his injured leg on the step and pushes up. It hurts like a reminiscent throb that Newt’s sure is more psychological than anything, but he continues with a determined confidence.

The person doesn’t help him at the top of the ladder when he stumbles, in fact the body just seems to watch him like a means of entertainment in the silent loneliness of the forest.

Newt brushes the dirt off his hands and looks to the shadow, at Minho and the drunken look in his eye.

“What’s wrong?” Newt asks him, taking in the sight of empty beer bottles and his torn shirt.

Minho takes a long sip off his beer, blinking at him monotonously.

Newt takes the bottle away from him and moves in closer, facing the drooped figure of the other boy that barely registers his existence.

“Did someone hurt you?” The blonde asks again, dismissing the thoughts that refuse such courtesy for the boy.

Minho falls apart in his hands, choking out sobs and wailing like a child. Newt doesn’t know what to do so he simply holds him, strokes outlines of patterns on the others back as he whispers optimism into his ear. His shoulder wets with Minho’s tears, his arms being all that held the other together as hey sway like breeze that is far too out of sync to exist naturally.

“I-I,” Minho stutters, his words being consumed by broken sobs and snot filled tears.

Newt shushes him, holding him tighter till he can hear the others heartbeat resting against his own.

They are silent for what feels like hours, the questioning ignorance in Newt’s mind is overshadowed by the need of security and familiarity that teases his wishes of Minho.

The boy lifts his head off his shoulder and meets his gaze with tear filled eyes, “I-I, I really fucked up.”

Newt waits for an elaboration, wrapping his hands around himself once again.

“I’m not-“ He cries, “I’m not I swear, I was just, it just _happened_ and I, and I just…”

“What happened?” Newt questions watching the other quiver and fall apart, ignoring the part of his selfishness that tells him he enjoys it.

“Thomas,” Minho whispers, “He kissed me.”

Newt inhales, exhales and refuse to release it, not wanting to repeat the pattern that carries the echo of Minho’s words. He is thrust into reality, into the soberness that lacks the rose tinted fairy-tale of his stupidity. The birds aren’t tweeting and there is no soft rock song that plays in the background with lyrics complaining of teenage angst and unrequited love. All that’s left is a nothingness that is hollowed by what Newt thought existed.

He attempts to say something before giving in to the truth and settling like the fallen leaves into the cold discomfort of the treehouse.

Minho interprets his shock as disgust, “I-I’m not gay,” He shouts, and Newt doesn’t have the time or the will to decipher how truthful he’s being. “He kissed me I just…. _Shuck,_ I just…”

“Got drunk and came here?” Newt suggests with a vindictiveness that makes Minho flinch. For the first time in forever, Minho is listening to him. For the first time in forever, Minho is weak.

The older boy wipes his tears with his sleeve, the snot and salt of his suffering staining the dishevelled fabric.

Anger and hopelessness settles on his tongue, the primal part of his emotion willing Newt to shout, to scream, to hit Minho again and again until he can no longer run, left as mangled mess of bones that weren’t put together quite right. He wants Minho to hurt, to look him in the eye and empathise with him.

But he can’t, because despite his academic achievements that prove his intelligence, Newt still loves him.

He moves towards Minho, arms pulling the boy into his lap and stroking his hair, whispering reassurances that seem to shrink the space between them both. They talk about school but not about his cheerleader girlfriend, they talk about friends but they don’t talk about Thomas, the words are hollowed with pragmatic insensitivities that sting the pleasantries they so forcefully whisper.

Minho calms down eventually, Newt’s lap soaking up all his tears as he wipes away the remnants of dirt that blemish his skin.

“It’s been years since I’ve been here,” Newt whispers to himself more than his company, “I can’t believe how real it all feels.”

“Yeah,” Minho replies after a few beats of silence, “It was never the same without you.”

Newt wants to call him out on his lie, but the truth was one he could not stomach. The blonde just nods and strengthens the pressure on Minho’s scalp.

“I thought it would have rotten away by now,” He tells the boy in his lap.

A small chuckle vibrates in Minho’s chest, “It did, but we stuck it back together.”

At first Newt assumed he was speaking metaphorically, thought Minho was reciting a complex analysis of the motifs of their existence and defining their friendship as a thing, as a constant, as a belief that he holds. But Minho was never one for poetry and these where no metaphorical actions, the treehouse had been put back together with fresh pieces of wood and misplaced nails.

There was a ‘we’ but it wasn’t a him, just a Minho and a Thomas that spent weekends collecting wood and stealing hammers before creating a Frankenstein styled treehouse to cover up the cracks and the rot. They had built it together with smiles and laughs, brushing shoulders and cold hands that squeezed the other tighter as if scared they’d fade back into the forest.

Newt had lied in a hospital bed crying about a twisted leg and the crushing consequences of his actions, of Thomas’ command.

Over the years their ‘we’ had become an inclusive closeness that rejected Newt’s imperfections. Their ‘we’ had become a ‘them.’

The blonde realises he’s crying, but Minho’s too drunk and selfish to realise.

“Thomas always said this treehouse would last forever,” The boy states from his lap, the words being consumed by the fabric of Newt’s trousers.

Newt’s grip becomes bruising, “Thomas says a lot of things.”

Minho laughs, or sobs, or both; It all sounds the same in the end.

 

* * *

 

 

Newt returns home from tutoring expecting the greeting of loneliness and silence that will nurture his mood of resilience. Instead he gets Thomas, sitting on his bed, tongue ticking with each passing second.

He can smell him in the air, the scent of fresh pine leaves and fallen rain. The burette’s eyes are too calculated and calm to give the impression of relaxation, instead he looks cemented in a position he had perfected over hours of waiting. Thomas had been dreaming of this moment ever since the day he understood what dreams were. Newt was sure that young Thomas had stayed up for sleepless nights picturing the way the other would look when he fell apart. And Newt almost wants to humour him, wants to play the role of the enemy in Thomas’ elaborate fairy-tale just to make see the childish fantasy make itself reality.

He realises Thomas knuckles are still bruised, it was as if the boy had been picking off the scabs that settled in after weeks of healing just so he could remember the shape of Newt’s body when he broke him apart. They bleed with fresh boredom, old scabs littering across Newt’s mattress that have been brushed away with blood soaked fingers. Thomas watches him enter, watches him drop his school bag and strand in the doorway like he’s lost.

 “Your dad let me in,” Thomas tells him and Newt’s not quite sure he believes him. He’s not sure it matters.

The blonde is silenced by the foreshadowed climax that leaves the bitter taste of knowing in his mouth.

He levels with Thomas’ stare, “I know what you did.”

A smile pulls thinly on the brunette’s lips.

Thomas stands, posture seated firmly within the boundaries of gravity without a clumsy sway of humanity. He moves like a corpse slowly and manipulated by a force far larger than himself.

Subconsciously Newt takes a step back, spine hitting his bedroom door with a thud.

Thomas casts his shadow over him, “So he told you?”

“Yes,” Newt chokes, finding his voice again from anger, “He told me everything. He was drunk- He was _crying_.” He growls, “You _used_ him.”

A silence settles just long enough to draw their attention to the thundering breeze that bangs against the window. Thomas breaks it with his sadistic laugh.

“ _Used him?_ ” He smiles, “ _He_ kissed me.”

Newt’s breath settles at the top of his lungs, cutting off his air supply with his own bewilderment.

Thomas moves in closer, toes touching his.

“So he didn’t tell you?” The brunette whispers, “He didn’t tell you that he came to _my_ house, how he sat in _my_ room and told me _everything_.”

‘Everything’, everything that Newt wasn’t sure existed or ever did. Minho is an everything that he doesn’t dare define in fear it would lose its meaning in the shallowness of words. Translated through logic, the everything that Minho is becomes a nothing, an idea, an infatuation that morphs into a religion he blindly follows to the end of existence. Newt doesn’t like that Minho has an everything, thinks it makes the boy more human and three-dimensional, something that Newt can attain which he can’t because if Minho were an object he would be a trophy, one that would scold his touch.

Thomas looks fragile in the lightened shadows, “He told me about Teresa, about the girl at the party, about fucking them both.” He slowly stokes Newt’s cheek with cold fingers, “Then he told me about you, about how you were there and how he wishes you weren’t.”

The brunette’s eyes well up with something that isn’t sadness and isn’t happiness, only the abundance of the two. “He talked about me, he said he liked me.”

There is no love, only acceptance, only spoken steps that dance around the reality of the emotions they don’t dare share with anyone. Even in Thomas biased re-enactment Minho never speaks of love.

“He said he _wanted_ me,” Thomas continued, the smile in his voice once more. “Then he kissed me.”

Newt’s heartbeat echoes into the emptiness of his chest. He expects to feel peaceful, at one with his reality because Thomas had ended his entire reason for existence. But he strengthens his loathing, one that anchors him back to the primal need for violence. Bravery fuels throughout his body, Newt pushing up from the door with a glare and tense posture.

Thomas pushes him back down without so much as a reaction.

“His lips were so soft, it was almost romantic the way he held me.” He laughs, “Minho didn’t pull away, he pushed in closer, he closed his eyes and he thought about me, I _know_ he did. I could feel it Newt, I could feel his heart against mine and it was beating.”

“He was crying,” Newt snaps, “It ruined him, _you_ ruined him. _You_ made him fall apart.”

A loud thud throws Newt‘s wrists above his head with a bruising speed, Thomas’ eyes bright with tears. “I made him realise the truth,” He growls.

Finally Newt begins to see through their childish words of feigned emotion. He pictures Minho in his head, imaging the way he’d watch them both now with raised eyebrows that creased in confusion. But there is something off-coloured about him and it takes Newt a moment to remember Minho’s face, his dimples, his smile, the bright shine of mischief in his eye because it had been so long since he had seen them. When he pictures Minho in his head he sees a child, sees all three of them still young and pure and untainted with the ugliness of age. They are bruised and dirtied by the forest, but they are smiling so sweetly. The thought makes him want to cry, because when they had learned what love was, it had all fallen apart.

He sees Thomas now, smiling and broken in the shadows of age. “He chose me,” The brunette tells him.

Newt fights back tears, wanting the comfort of another to hold him close and whisper reassurances into his ear. He wants someone to tell him to grow up, to repeat the lies about silver linings and happy endings that existed within the fairy tales he would cling to as a child. He wants to be that same child again, wants to snuggle up in blankets while he’s read such things from the cracked spines of once treasured books that now lay to dust on his bookshelf.

Thomas moves in closer, but the space between them is just as cold and choking as before. The other boy holds onto his wrist tightly as he whispers into his ear, _“I win.”_

He pushes away from Newt, picking up his jacket from the floor and stopping idly to remember his surrounding that will help fuel his ego in future memories. Thomas goes to his bookshelf and cleans a long line of dust with his finger, bringing it to his face to inspect it He counts the spines of Newt’s books with his hands, dancing across their covers as if he were remembering the tales of warriors and dragons in his head fondly.

Suddenly the brunette stops his pacing steps, leaning forward and taking Newt’s snow globe into his hands. Confusion fills his handsome features as he throws the souvenir in the air, eyes narrowing at the flurry of leaves that smash against the glass violently. The object looks so small and fragile in the others hands, his carelessness lacking the almost religious hold of Newt’s or the reminiscent briefness of Minho’s touch. Thomas holds the snow globe like it is simply that, an object that is breakable and transparent.

Thomas finally seems to understand what the snow globe represents, sinking in the manmade reflections of the golden leaves and trees that fill the tacky worthless souvenir.

He throws the snow globe into the air, and catches it.

The brunette walks towards him so Newt moves away from the door, gesturing for the other boy to leave him in the misery of his own enlightenment.

He throws the snow globe into the air, and catches it.

Brown eyes watch him cower, musing over his slightness with a scrutinising gaze.

He throws the snow globe into the air, and catches it.

Newt’s fingers twitch, a snide remark forming on his tongue but he is unable to voice his concerns because Thomas had taken his reasoning’s away from him.

He throws the snow globe into the air and as it falls he moves away, sending the treasure to the floor with a shatter of glass. The mess of liquid pours across the floor, the stain littered with small golden leaves that look so pointlessly opaque in their new environment. The base of the snow globe is all that’s left unharmed, the circle rolling towards Newt’s feet before falling flat.

Newt stares at it all blindly, sees the shattered remains of the tiny forest become nothing but a nuisance to clean up.

Thomas steps over the glass as he departs, leaving nothing but a foot shaped mess of destruction in his wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the awesome feedback last chapter along with all the kudos, you guys just keep surprising me! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I'm sorry if it was a little later than normal. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!


	6. Playing the Forgotten

It’s both an absence and a shadow, the lack of something that did exist, that Newt was sure of, and now stalks him as a reminder for what he had lost.

Because Minho is gone, and with him went _everything_ else.

Thomas doesn’t talk to him anymore, no longer having Minho to cement their loathing towards each other, the binding glue of his friendship dried and flaky in his departure. The brunette still sits two seats away from him in chemistry and it’s here that he watches the other hide behind his stoic face and stiff upper lip. Newt never sees him cry but he knows the boy is broken, Newt can see it in his eyes, he can smell his displeasure in the air and it is mixed with the sense of familiarity.

The blonde had dreamed of this, of Thomas being this broken forgotten nothing in the eyes of the universe, succumbing to the darkness that had claimed Newt as its own for many years now. But the victory is bitter sweet because the smell of remorse is far stronger on his own skin.

Minho’s name is taken off the register in class but Newt still whispers it beneath his breath when they move from ‘O’ to ‘R’ without a care in the world.

Thomas whispers it too.

It’s a Saturday when he wakes up at midnight before squeezing his eyes back shut in will for the universe to corrupt his dreams with Minho. The pain distorts the darkness behind his eyelids, offering a sacrifice alongside his prayer for Minho to return with a legitimate excuse.

It’s a Sunday when he dreams of Minho knocking, holding him tight and refusing to leave. It’s a Monday when he dreams of Minho’s parents turning up with a letter signed in crosses. It’s then on the Tuesday he wishes of a police officer bowing their head with a heavy spoken condolence of death.

But Minho is very much alive and that reality is heart wrenchingly painful, knowing that Minho had left them both mortally without so much as a word.

A week without him turns into sleep terrors and unstoppable tears, Newt’s father holding him tight when he wakes screaming and telling him he could make the darkness go away again. The next day he’s at a meeting with a doctor who asks him how he’s feeling and why he hurts the way he does.

 _“I don’t know,”_ He would tell her and for the first time in his life, she doesn’t believe him.

She gives up asking on the second week, instead suggesting they play a game of chess where she makes stupid moves and lets him win.

 _“It’s not a sickness,”_ She told him after Newt had whispered checkmate, _“It’s an opportunity for help.”_

Newt had nodded because that’s what she expected him to do, that’s what she’d write down in her black notebook with longer words and a shorter focus.

Some days it was a different doctor, a man with a beard and a hearty laugh that hurt Newt’s ears. Some days his father would come with him, patting his back and sharing irrelevant details from his childhood. And some days there would be more children with glum faces and scars that talk about the darkness and the emptiness that Newt wills himself to voice in empathy.

Some days the doctor at the head of the circle would ask him why he was here and Newt would say _“I don’t know”_ although he does and so do they, because if he had learnt anything from Minho’s departure it was that misery _loves_ company.

The doctor tells him he’s getting better and Newt nods and forces himself to smile, lying brightly about sleep filled nights and redemption. She lets him go early one Thursday but Newt doesn’t tell his dad, he just walks alone.

He reaches Minho’s house, the paint decayed and snow un-shovelled in the driveway. The moving sign sways mockingly in the breeze so Newt kicks it down, his injured leg wailing in pain as he stomps on the wood again and again. The birds in the surrounding trees cry in fear of the sound, leaving their homes for safety and silence.

 

* * *

 

 

Newt remembers the smell of the forest, he remembers the way it claims him, the way it shushes him and wills him to speak. But he remembers remembering the forest the most, the sheer unapologetic harshness of its presence stalking him like a predator. It is here that he questions the forest, wonders whether the trees represent the sadness that suffocates him or the hope that shackles him. He’s inclined to believe both as he is hopelessly wondering in the fragmented remains of his numbness.

It’s become a routine now, Newt walking past the same landmarks that have him, Minho and Thomas scratched into them with footsteps or broken blades. He sees the lake again, hears Minho’s young voice giggling and smiling and jumping with the motions of the water. He walks past the old oak, the giant trunk decayed at their small heights as Thomas had thrown rocks against the bark to see how high he could reach until the tree would throw one back. Then he sees the treehouse, the mess of leaves beneath his feet reminding him of the crushing agony that took his health, the one footed remains of his footsteps that are both everything he is and everything he isn’t.

Then he’s running, jogging and walking, his stamina out of sync with the determination in his heart. He sees a figure in the treehouse, the shadows of a curled up body like before. Everything’s the same as before and this is his chance to change the course of misery, to convince Minho to stay and tell him he loves him. His feet move so fast he stumbles on the ladder, the wood swaying along with his body just enough not to fall. Newt’s hands quiver when they reach the top, holding out to Minho shaped shadow that, like before, does not search for him.

He opens his eyes to see Thomas, weaker and sadder than Newt had ever seen Minho.

“Oh,” He says without registering it, his ignorance not protecting the other from the disappointment in his tone.

Thomas blinks away the tears and dirties them with his sleeves. He looks up at him with a mirrored disappointment.

Newt expects sarcasm or a vicious laugh, instead he just gets vulnerability and a sunken smile that is lost and confused. Thomas looks like a child, like wounded animal that is timidly bearing its head to signal reassurance and a warm hold of nurture. Newt however, can offer him neither, so he just stands and sways and watches because it is morbidly beautiful, like watching a wingless bird try to fly.

“I thought he’d be here,” Thomas tells him, voice empty of passion, “I thought he’d come and tell me why, tell me why he left and why-“

An angered sob tears through his lungs, his throat to pained and human to translate such agony into sound.

Thomas shakes his head, “I thought he’d come back for me.”

Newt doesn’t say anything, can’t say anything because he is no better. He thought he was running for self-discovery or independence, but alike every time before he was running towards Minho. He was running with an idealistic blindness that caused them both to stumble in the same rabbit hole that loops again and again.

Struck with the sudden feeling of exhaustion, Newt takes a seat next to the brunette on the cold and moth eaten wood. There is no interior to help lessen the brute of their surroundings, no belongings that they had brought with them at children. Newt could remember the way it had looked, the stolen goods or their own homes brought to this place, their refuge, their togetherness to combine each element of themselves. Minho had brought the blankets, the comfort in a softness that warmed their skin when they’d huddle closer under the winter air. Newt brought books that he’d read to the others, brought pens and the stoic presence of knowledge alongside the fantasy that riddled his innocence. Thomas had brought a Swiss knife, rusty but sharpened from his father’s office which he’s craft into a pen to write his signature on the stones and the wood to make himself a part of the forest forever.

But now it was empty, everything gone or rotten or torn apart. Newt’s quite sure Thomas notices this too.

The other boy shivers form the absence of comfort, his arms bare in the winter’s scorn. He moves closer and Newt lets him, lets him lie against his arm only slightly as they pretend the other doesn’t exist.

“He told me he’d never leave me,” Thomas whispers.

“I know,” Newt tells him, “At the funeral.”

A reminiscent smile pulls at the corners of Thomas mouth.

“He came to visit me the night they died, Minho that is,” He scratches the floorboards beneath him absently, “He just arrived unannounced and we played video games and ate crappy food and I just thought ‘this is it’. I was right, that was it. That was all I ever wanted. That _was_ it because everything else just… stopped. He left late and I sat at the bottom of the stairs and waited for them to come home. They never did of course.”

Thomas words are light, aired with an emotion that is numb in memory. He speaks of the events like he’s reciting it off a scripture or a holy book that he is not entirely convinced by.

“I just sat there,” He continued, “And I waited and waited. They always came home late, always drunk or high or just too pissed off to remember the way back home. I thought they might have been arrested, I hoped they had, thought maybe that this would all be the end. And it was, just not the one I dreamed of.”

Newt wants to touch him, wants to say something just to persuade the other that he’s there and present in body and in mind. But he doesn’t need to because they both know this.

Thomas shivers. “Dad would always be shit faced, it was Saturday and he just got his pay check from work. Every Saturday night was bar night, and Sunday and Monday and… I _hated_ him, I hated her, I hated them both. I hated how she’d watch him hit me, how she’d stare and look away like I disgusted her.” Thomas scratches the wood so hard it leaves marks in the shape of his anger. “I wanted her to die, wanted them both to be torn apart. Not like that. They deserved to pay for what they did.”

A dry lump forms in Newt’s throat and he forces himself to swallow it.

“He died on impact, just-”He throws his hands in the air to signal and quick rush and a falling sensation, “-just like that. No pain, no remorse, no time to think about everything he did. She died on the way to the hospital but the part of the fallen tree they ran into lodged itself right here,” He points to his heart, “It was so deep, said she passed out from shock. _‘Quietly, no pain,’_ the doctor said, _‘almost like she was going to sleep.’_ ” He laughs, “Like that was supposed to make me feel better.”

The trees outside wail in the wind, knocking against the wood as if to request refuge from the cruelness of the weather.

“It sticks with you, you know. Like a numbness, an emptiness. It feels like you’re falling apart on a loop.” He looks to the floor, at the dirt and the rot. “But Minho, Minho made it all okay. Made me feel…”

 _“Wanted?”_ Newt suggests, “Relevant? Loved? Important?”

Thomas looks up, “Yeah, he made me feel everything I thought I never would.”

The air is stale with tears, Newt feeling that desperate impeding dread of tears, the dry swell and a choking groan burrowing deep within his chest. And they can almost see it, the etching outline of Minho’s memory completing their triangle formation. They could almost see his small legs and mischievous smile, the sound of his laugh and he weight of his presence. It was almost as if he was here, the ghost of him, his memory, just watching them.

Newt looks to the moon and thinks about him, wonders if Minho were thinking of them.

Moonlight casts itself on Thomas tear streaked cheeks, “But now he’s gone and all the shitiness is back. I feel… I feel the darkness and the emptiness and I can’t- I can’t _sleep_ or eat or breathe because he isn’t here. He just left and… _and_ …” He dissolves into a fit of panicked gasps.

Newt moves closer, wipes his tears away with a cold hand that looks sickly pale under the light of the moon. The tears run past Newt’s hand and down his wrist, sliding down his arm and his clothes till he becomes stained with the other’s misery. Thomas falls against his shoulder and screams, cries, splutters out pain filled agony and Newt holds him. He feels the lightness of the others skull, the fragile shape of his spine and the breakable emptiness of his mind. Newt has the power to tear him apart manually and he’s quite sure Thomas wouldn’t mind that, to die here of all places. Newt can tear him apart but he doesn’t, just squeezes lightly as he cries too.

Time becomes irrelevant, the dark cover of the night remaining and floating in and out of consciousness with a sky void of stars. Newt watches the world above him, thinks he sees a shooting star so he closes his eyes and wishes for Minho before realising it was simply an aeroplane that eventually leaves him with the darkness.

Their tears dry but when they look at each other they still see the remnants of snot and the red flush of their cheeks.

“I miss him,” Thomas tells him and all Newt can do is nod.

The brunette stops shivering and bends down, catching Newt’s lips with his own. He moves softly, almost in parody of love as he fits his lips against his own. Their lips crack which adds the metallic taste of blood to the kiss as they absent-mindedly draw patterns in the others mouth, write prayers for change and pretend that they are normal functioning teenagers. Thomas tastes stale and a little like dirt, far different from the sweet alcohol tainted taste of his mouth years ago.

Thomas was his first kiss, first enemy, the first man to try to kill him. Thomas had written the ground rules for his existence, forced him to lean the ways of a life that was not his own. Thomas taught him that love was pain, was obsession, was a game of jealousy and defeat. Thomas corrupted his sanity with a harsh truth of reality.

He pushes Newt away and breaks the trail of saliva that connects them with speed. And then suddenly he’s laughing, cackling, screaming out tears of amusement as he watches Newt’s brow crease in confusion. The harshness of his voice echoes in the tree house, shaking the structure and threatening them all to fall to the floor as a mass of organs and splintered wood.

Thomas moves closer to chuckle in his ear, his smile maliciously genuine.

“Jump,” He whispers and then laughs again when Newt cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a little late again but this chapter was VERY stubborn. I hope you all enjoyed reading, and I'd like to thank you all for all the hits, comments and kudos etc. If you noticed any spelling mistakes please let me know, feedback of any kind is greatly appreciated!


	7. Playing the Winner

Newt leaves it all behind that year, packs his bags for university and departs only with an awkward goodbye hug from his father at the train station. He studies science and medicine because that’s what he’s good at, and maths, and English on Friday nights. His roommate tells him he’s insane for doing so, between hangovers and drunken belches that result in him setting the stove on fire and eating Newt’s food. Newt just grunts like he always does, falling back into his piles of textbooks that litter every surface in their small shared dorm.

A girl from his reading class asks if he wants to go out drinking with her friends and although Newt appreciates the sentiment, he politely declines. But she insists.

“I don’t drink,” he had told her but she still handed him a beer and a friendly smile.

As the night grew on she got drunker, head falling on his shoulder and telling him about how great he was and how she wished her boyfriend was like him. Her friends start pairing off with random strangers, her drunken stupor strengthening under the light of the bar. It’s only when she falls face first on a six foot stranger and throws up on the bouncer does Newt intervene.

“You’re so nice,” she slurred as Newt carried her home, “anyone else would have tried something.”

Newt tucks her in bed and moves to turn out the lights but then she grabs his hand and slurs out stories of her roommate’s promiscuity and her boyfriend’s wondering eyes. He nods his head in time with her inconsistent ramblings.

He wishes her sweet dreams before she cuts him off with a cackle. “I thought you didn’t drink,” she exclaims as she throws her heels onto her first edition copy of _Great Expectations_.

Newt winces, “I don’t.”

She giggles and falls back against her mattress, “But you walk all funny… like, like a drunken man.”

He turns off the lights and heads back to his dorm, abandoning sleep in favour for revision and highlighting key concepts.

“You’re a prodigy,” his lecturer tells him the next day after reading his ten thousand word essay on the nature of enzymes.

Newt finds himself smiling.

He wins student of the month and shakes hands with the head councillor who talks about his pet chinchilla and passion for croquet. He doesn’t tell his dad.

Christmas comes around too early, Newt ignoring the phone calls from his father for as long as he can before he’s back on the train home with a dirtied backpack full of revision.

His dad holds him tight on the platform, “I missed you so much.”

The small blonde erodes into tears in his father’s arms, strangers cursing them as they walk around them both.

The car ride home is relatively silent, broken up by conservative songs about Santa Claus and a few questions from his dad.

The two of them curl up and watch _The Grinch_ and drink hot chocolate like the old time where everything was a lot more simple and a lot less broken.

“I’m proud of you champ,” His father tells him after The Grinch’s heart grows twice its size, and Newt was almost inclined to believe him.

He tells his dad about the award and his eating habits and his friend in class, the man smiling as he scratches his greying beard with bitten fingernails.

“So you’re making friends then?” He asks and Newt analyses the leading question.

“Yeah,” He says after a few beats of silence, “They’re nice.”

His dad pats his knee with a large hand, “That’s good, a fresh start.” He takes Newt’s empty mug out his hands and changes the disc with another, much older Christmas film. He seems hesitant when he meets Newt’s eyes, “I never liked them.”

Newt doesn’t need to ask what he means by ‘them’ knowing the whole village knew of the three mischievous children that turned into poisonous, broken adults.

A silence that is filled with memories settles, almost like at a war memorial service where Newt would think about Minho or Thomas or the both of them instead of the fallen soldiers and the blood coloured poppies.

“What happened to them?” Newt finds himself asking, ignoring the burning, biting sensation of his gut he grew to punish himself for such thoughts.

His dad sighs, “Well, the Park’s moved back, without Minho of course. He’s at the coast doing a sport degree or something, got a scholarship and all. Everyone’s very proud,” His father’s tone shifts to borderline sarcasm on the last line, scratching his arm so violently he marks the skin. “And Thomas,” The breath in Newt’s throat is strangled out with tension, “he’s still here. Moved out of his aunt’s place about when you left and got a job, not a good one mind you. I think he lives in one of those apartments, his parents money came to him when he turned eighteen last month.”

Newt searches his hand for an anchor only finding air that mocks its place.

“Everyone’s real proud of you Newt,” His dad mediates, “your grandma’s going up the wall with excitement. She told me she’s always wanted a doctor in the family, guess she forgot about my six years at medical school.”

Newt laughs despite himself.

“People in the village always ask after you, ‘where’s that lad of yours’ they say when I walk in the hospital and I make sure I tell them everything about you,” The man’s voice wavers with a chuckle and Newt’s eyes soften with compassion, “Been a saving grace actually, half of them are raging over the new housing plans.”

“What new housing plans?” Newt asks.

His father waves a hand over his shoulder, “Down the street, you know where that bloody forest is.” Newt gulps. “I say good bloody riddance, that forest has caused more hassle than its worth. After…” He looks to his son and stops himself, “Dangerous. Too dangerous with that river and all those fallen trees, it’s an accident _waiting_ to happen.”

The laughter of the characters in the film fills the air, the black and white sepia tones of the setting casting darkness over the small blonde. His dad laughs too at the slapstick comedy on the screen, taking a sip of brandy and handing one to Newt. The boy gulps it down, not ridding himself of the stale taste of despair that lingers on his tongue.

 

* * *

 

 

His world hits play again on Christmas Eve, suddenly, dramatically, with too much force for reality. Newt finds himself in the town centre appreciating the Christmas decorations on the shop fronts and the flashing lights that blind him.

That’s until there’s a hand and an opportunity tapping him on the shoulder.

Minho is so much older, his eyes ablaze with that same friendliness that is tarnished by the space between them both. The man in front of him is handsome with age, chin covered with stubble from a neglected morning shave, arms filled with Christmas shopping and fingers that pull at his threaded jumper. He’s taller, so much taller and fuller and fitter than Newt remembered him being, the small blonde staring at the creature above him in a long casted shadow.

“Hey,” Minho says like time is irrelevant, ridding the thought carelessly along with emotions that Newt prizes like loathing and jealousy and good-nature.

Newt just blinks.

The man in front of him smiles, like he always does, or did at least. Minho is smiling and Newt feels that dreaded puddle of love fill his lungs with a liquid he swears will choke him.

“Hey,” Newt repeats, hands leaving the cold glass and swaying without support in the harsh winter air.

The both of them tap their feet to a silent tune they both know, they both _remember_ , shivering along with nature and the memories that demand they do so.

Minho grabs the back of his head like always does when he’s nervous, like when he’s about to run a race or hit on a pretty girl.

“Do you wanna’...” He clears his throat, “I don’t know, get a coffee or something,” He punches Newt shoulder lightly like he’s one of his jock friends and the blonde sways far harsher than anticipated, “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

They end up in a local coffee shop, Minho ordering a large expresso and a slice of carrot cake while Newt orders a small hot chocolate.

“You haven’t changed,” Minho tells him when Newt places his order, like he has some kind of exclusive knowledge and power that dictates him to hold authority over Newt. Minho is trying to tell him that nothing has changed because he’s back and he knows he’s Newt’s everything. Newt just laughs.

He holds the warm mug in his hand and he watches Minho eat his cake slowly.

“So,” He says, licking a crumb from the side of his mouth, “Your dad told my mum you’re doing medicine or something. I’m not surprised, you’re a smart cookie. If I was a betting man I’d bet on you.”

Newt takes it as a compliment. “Yeah, I want to be a doctor, help people.”

“What kind of doctor?” Minho asks with the courtesy of a gentleman or a second cousin twice removed who asks just for the sake of filling the silence.

“I’ve not decided yet. I’d like to work with children, after my… accident, I guess I really looked up to a lot of my doctors,” He half-whispers into his cup, Minho grabbing the back of his head.

The silence makes his drink tastes sour so he looks up from the table, “What about you? My dad said you got a scholarship.”

“Yeah,” He beams, “I was scouted while at a cross country competition, he said I had what it takes.”

“So you want to be a runner?” Newt asks.

“Nah, it doesn’t really work like that,” he dismisses, “I’d like to do coaching, maybe management, I don’t know. I’m only eighteen for shucks sake, I don’t need to have my life figured out already.”

Newt’s breath catches in his lungs at the word ‘shuck’, overwhelmed with the memories of their childhood. The three of them had sat in their treehouse and talked about the trivial things that concerned them at the time when Thomas had suggested they create a language that only they could understand, only having enough attention span for simple words. Newt had forgotten most of them now, only using them in curse when he’d stub his toe or mutter under his breath. His father never did like swearing, so ‘shuck’ and ‘klunk’ along with a large range of colourful curses had become inventively useful in their youth.

Minho obliviously continues, “I guess everything will become a lot clearer after I graduate.”

The blonde finishes his drink, leaving just the dark bitter mixture at the bottom of his cup that he left on principle ever since he was young. Thomas once told him that people like his aunt could read the bottom of your mug to discover your future. The two of them had sat on Minho’s front steps and squinted at the brown liquid, swaying it around and searching for answers. Then Minho had called from the house and Thomas ran off, pushing over Newt’s mug that shattered across the porch.

Glumly he stares into his mug, swishing the liquid around and frowning.

Minho, for once, seems to notice his change in mood, misinterpreting it with ignorance that only fuels the emptiness. “What about Thomas?” He says suddenly, dramatically, with too much force for such fresh wounds.

“I don’t know,” Newt tells him cuttingly, “I haven’t spoken to him since you left.”

He pushes cup away from him and fiddles with his fingers.

Minho’s brow creases in confusion, “Oh.”

He looks up at Minho, at his emotionless stare and matured complexion, sees him and searches inside himself for loathing, for distrust, for anger. He wills himself to hate him, to shout at him, to kick him, to leave him alone and waiting like the other always did to him. But all that’s left is the nothingness that’s tinged with the shackling admiration of a boy Newt’s not sure exists anymore.

“He’s why I fell you know,” Newt whispers, eyes harsh on Minho’s soft opaque ones, “Thomas. He’s the reason I can’t run anymore, or walk. He’s the reason.”

The whole world is thrown into overdrive, presenting itself as a silent as all murmuring stops so all that’s left is him and Minho and the words that bounce off their reality.

Minho leans in suddenly, dramatically, too harsh for the sepia tones of their surroundings.  He chokes out a stuttering breath as he leans in closer.

“He pushed you?” Minho asks, voice filled with an emotion Newt tries to place. Disappointment he wonders, at him or Thomas or the both of them for reaching such levels beneath himself. Fear, that he couldn’t stop it, that he didn’t, at the limitless authority of Thomas’ violent state of mind?

Newt’s young face creases in bewilderment, “No. Thomas was on the floor next to the broken ladder,” He searches the stained table for excuses. “Don’t you remember?” He asks.

Minho shakes his head. “It’s been so long.”

And that’s it, the words Newt had been waiting for to varnish the pictured hierarchy of their friendship, of his existence. Minho doesn’t remember because he doesn’t care, because it didn’t concern him. Newt and Thomas had dedicated their existence to the older boy, had fought bloodied and bruised to be where he was now, in the presence of the almighty himself. The two of them had recited the past to themselves every night and every morning like a prayer, wrapped their whole lives against this set of commandments and only them. Minho was oblivious to the two of them, of the game, of the past.

Minho doesn’t remember.

“No,” Newt repeats, “He told me to jump.”

“You jumped?” Minho exclaimed, “I thought you fell. Why did you jump?”

The blonde blinks, opens his mouth and closes it as he tries to steady his breathing. “Be-Because I…”

_Because Thomas told me to._

“Look, Newt, this was all so long ago, years and years. Things change, people change. Sometimes you have to forget and move on, learn from your mistakes,” Minho recites casually like a politician that’s desperately trying to pacify the masses.

Newt tries to protest but his words fall pointlessly into the abyss of lost opportunities.

Minho takes a final gulp of his drink, “I mean you’re gonna’ be a doctor, forget about all that.”

_Forget about him._

But Newt doesn’t want to forget.

“I have to go,” Minho tells him, putting on his jacket and picking up his shopping bags, “I hope you have a great Christmas Newt, you deserve it.” He moves in, patting Newt on the shoulder and leaving without giving a tip.

But this time Newt doesn’t let him get away.

“Minho!” He cries down the street, the owner turning around and wincing. The blonde walks closer, cautiously so not to slip on the ice or harshen his already existing injuries.

They stare at each other, searching for an answer and the possibilities of words while planning for their outcomes.

And then Newt knows what he’s going to say.

“You should see Thomas,” He tells the man, “before you go again.”

Minho nods stiffly and walks away again; footsteps heavy in the snow leaving symbols Newt’s sure will engrave the surface of the pavement forever.

Christmas is quiet with just him and his dad, the two of them eating too much food and watching too much crappy television. He goes to bed that night and looks at the starless sky, wondering if Thomas was thinking about him too. He falls asleep to the sound of silence and the comfort of loneliness that carelessly weighs down the empty space at this side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finished this chapter early so I thought I'd post it straight away, only the final chapter and epilogue to go until this story's over! May or may not get it finished by Christmas, but probably not, I'm trying to work on a Christmas one-shot that just isn't happening so I incorporated a little Christmas into this chapter. 
> 
> Again, thanks for the comments, kudos, hits, everything, you are all amazing!


	8. Playing the Remembered

He is older, born again in the springtime that chills his skin and clears his vision. The wind is biting and harsh as he sneaks through the warning signs and moves through the crowds of protests. Newt is first and he is last, favouring lighter treads and a reminiscent pace as he marvels at the emptiness and the nothingness of the landscape that exist only within his memory of trees and space. He feels weightless in the silence, suspended in reality as he waits for a voice, only to be met with a chirping of birds.

A small sparrow lands on a tree trunk, tired form searching for its home, drawn to the boy that stood as the only mortal thing in the white noise of death. It holds a twig that’s torn of berries. Newt whistles, and it turns to him, tilting its head in curiosity before it leaves, taking flight to flee from his words.

Newt, like always, is alone.

The blonde walks past the space where the river used to be, now just a cavernous flat of mud and unfamiliar footprints of builders and architects.  Then he reaches out to stroke the large oak, now a pile of bricks and cement mixers that smell synthetic and manmade.

He walks in sync with the smaller, younger and far more foolish version of himself that holds his hand as he leads the child through the forest. He hears him cry, hears that sharp screeching wail and a smashing of bones along with the sympathetic glee of the treehouse.

The memory of his childhood turns opaque in his grip, hand searching the spring air for an anchor to his dreams. He looks up at the treehouse, the last remaining memory of the forest.

This is their refuge, a place that was built by them, seemingly constructed and rotting for this exact moment. It is everything he remembered it being, everything that was him, dirtied and mangled. It looks like it will fall and crush him, and maybe it will, and maybe he’ll let it.

Minho, like always, steps cautiously around the known sensitivities that lie to rest in the forest, so small and fragile and silent that Newt doesn’t even know he’s there. The taller man watches from afar as he waits for the moment to present itself.

A small family of birds settles on the branch of the only remaining tree in the forest, whispering silently to one another as if his was a long awaited moment for nature.

The air is fragile as Minho tears it apart with his words.

“Do you hate looking at it?” He asks the blonde who turns around and slowly meets his gaze, “After everything that’s happened?”

Newt doesn’t know what to say to make it all okay again, to make Minho fall for him or at least fall into something like consciousness. He doesn’t know what to say so he says nothing.

The older man etches himself onto the soil as he steps closer, the two of them swaying lightly in the breeze just far enough apart to feel the space between them both hollowly welcoming.

“It’s so sad,” Minho says and the blonde just nods. “I can’t believe after all this time this all that’s left. Everything’s gone, the lake, the oak, and next this.” He strokes the trunk of the tree expecting a pleasant sigh from nature, but Newt only hears a growl. “It’s hard to say goodbye, even after everything, it still means something.”

The blonde turns to him as he blinks away dry tears. “Does it?”

For once Minho doesn’t stutter, “Of course it does.”

The wind whistles slightly, broken up in a spluttering agony for breath that was refused by the machines that tore it down. It lives on only in the air, like a flurry of ashes after a fire that are carried to the heavens only to be dropped when hope is fulfilled.

“I never thought it would be so hard to say goodbye,” Minho tells him.

A silence settles heavily in the atmosphere, harsh and assaulting while at the same time being comfortable and the only reply for such a situation. They are given space to reflect, to dream and to meet there once cherished fantasy with reality.

The ladder smells of damp wood and moss, termites and other insects have torn it apart by their greed for survival, leaving what nature always did, a rotten corpse that lived on as a memory, sinking into its grave and feeding the soil that would be its final resting place.

Thomas is last like never before, watching silently from a few meters back, expecting the two of them to fall into an embrace. He watches Minho sway and wrap his jacket tighter around himself. He watches Newt’s eyes grasp to the treehouse and the memories it holds.

He watches their hands gradually succumb the distance between them both as they watch their world fall apart on an endless loop.

Reality is as clear and as light as spring, and Thomas is enlightened enough to feel ashamed.

“I told him to jump you know,” the brunette tells them, their hands torn apart by the reality of his words. “He was standing right there,” He points to the hanging floorboards that sway lightly in the breeze, “And you were gone and it was dark. I told him to jump and he did, and he fell and he broke his legs.”

In all his life Newt had dreamt of this, of the truth. He wished for those words and the sure enough feeling of happiness he would feel when he won, to see Minho’s brow crease in anger and Thomas’ tears. But the consequences were not what he had predicted, Thomas doesn’t cry, he just moves in closer and Minho doesn’t shout or gulp, he just nods. And he doesn’t like he’s won anything because he hasn’t, he just feels numb.

“It’s not your fault,” He tells Thomas who looks both surprised and horrified, “You told to me to jump but I did it. You didn’t make me do anything, I decided to jump, I was the one who wanted to impress Minho.”

When hearing his name the older man shuffles.

Newt sighs, “I can’t blame you forever.”

It’s humorously depressing when he thinks about it, the century of writing themselves in a fable of love and jealousy, acting out the roles of the villain and the hero. They had built themselves to be everything they weren’t until they forgot about their heartbeats and the way their brains would shake their heads at their decisions.

They wasted their childhood looking for treasure in a baron empty landscape that fooled them all with maps and spades.

Suddenly Newt doesn’t know what to believe anymore, the only reality he’s sure of is that everything he has followed was pointless childish.

He looks to his left and sees Minho, face so mature and posture so strong that Newt’s almost manipulated into the idea that he is a gentleman, but he isn’t fooled. Minho is childishly selfish and Newt supposes he can’t blame him because he and Thomas had dedicated their lives to making him perfection, idolising him and thinking of nothing but his handsome face and smile for their entire lives. He grew up believing he was a god, forgetting all about the decency and kindness he had learned through nature as a child. He had forgotten who he was in the madness of it all.

He looks to his right and sees Thomas, so much taller and completion far more mature, but he too is transfixed in the mind of a child that is jealously grasping at implausible ideologies and stamping his feet when things don’t go his way. The brunette had brainwashed himself with fairy tales of love and companionship, thorough the harshness of his life of violence and neglect he saw himself through the eyes of others until he learnt he didn’t like what he saw. Thomas was broken apart and in his desperate scramble for fulfilment he had stitched himself back together with the pain and violence that littered his existence.

The rose-tinted manipulation of Newt’s childhood is gone and the world is ugly and mangled.

But Thomas still sees the refuge and he is foolish. “I love you,” he tells Minho and for one his voice is void of emotion, like the words are simply a statement and Newt supposes they are because they’ve known the truth for a while now.

“I love you too,” Newt voices and Minho turns to them both and blinks.

The wind is the only thing that consumes their words as they echo throughout the empty forest.

“I know,” Minho says, “I guessed I loved you both too. I don’t understand it, I don’t think I ever will but I did, I swear, I loved you both and it made no sense and it still doesn’t.”

Thomas nods and so does Newt.

There is no heart-swelling Hollywood confession of love that makes everything clear, just a mutual understanding of the truth they all knew from the start.

This was their refuge, a place that was built by them and for them, seemingly constructed for the years of childish laughter and memories of companionship. It is everything they are and ever were, confused and mangled as it suffocates the tree that it holds to until it dies. It will fall but it won’t crush them, because they leave and the forest knows it will never see them again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only the epilogue to go now, honestly this is so nearly the end that I cried when writing this. I’m really sorry if you feel this is anti-climactic and I guess it is but then again that’s kind of the point, reality is shitty and it’s about time our boys grew up. Thank you so much for the support for this story, I was actually looking for some fics to read the other day and I can’t believe this is the third most commented tominewt story on the site. Thank you for every comment, every hit, every bookmark and every kudos, you all inspire me with your kindness.
> 
> Epilogue won’t take me too long, tying up a few loose ends and a few revelations I hope won’t piss you off any more than I already have! Comments are greatly appreciated and I hope to see you all sooner because this chapter was very late! 
> 
> I wish you all a VERY happy New Year


	9. Playing the Truth

Like everything else it takes time to heal, ten whole years in fact. Some nights he still wakes from terrors, that feeling of sweat ghosting across his spine like an old embrace from a lover who is faintly present in muscle memory. He’ll wake up and look at the ceiling, the voice in his brain saying something self-doubting and he’ll laugh because it reminds him of the times where he hated himself and the world above him for not crashing down. Sometimes Alby would jump up in fear, interpreting his cries as ones of pain, so he’ll ask what’s wrong and Newt will just smile and turn towards him.

 _“Nothing,”_ he’d say, “ _Just go back to sleep.”_

Newt loves the sound his bed mate would make after that, a deep annoyed sigh and the clicking of a lightbulb that would plunge his world into darkness and plague his dreams of kisses and laughs.

There was a look in his lover’s eyes that was curious, like Alby could sense the dark hold of depression that would loosen and tighten in a strangling grip on Newt’s pale throat. On nights in when the blonde looked up from his lover’s warm lap, he’d see his brow tighten in confusion that would burrow as a sense of adventure in his mind that built up boundaries.

Newt tested these boundaries with his hands, with his lips, with his body, with his words that would tell the other man that he was whole again until Newt thought to believe it himself.

He learned to love himself from the reflection in his lover’s eyes that translated his slightness and crooked nature to one of a celestial beauty.

“I love you,” Alby had told him, Alby had _convinced_ him, and for the first time in his life Newt can say it back without feeling like he’s cheating the definition.

They were a collective, two single beings that clung to each other for stability and affection.

Newt sighs in memory as he shakes his head, picking up the last cardboard box from his car and carrying it up the agonisingly long flight of stairs.

“Bloody hell,” He scoffs as he opens the front door with his new key on his new key ring with a new sense of excitement in his chest. “We just had to pick the apartment block with no bloody lift.”

Alby laughs in the doorway, smile wide and handsome but welcoming above everything else. He doesn’t demand he help or patronize the blonde about his limp, he trusts him enough to take care of himself and Newt thinks that’s his favourite thing about the other man.

He places the box down on the coffee table and sighs again, strong arms gripping his waist and pulling him against a broad chest.

“I can tell you’re cranky, my Newt doesn’t swear, he’s got the voice of an angel,” Alby whispers against his ear, lightly seductive and suggestive but teasingly present in reality.

“Fuck you,” Newt jokes as he elbows his lover away, the hold on his hip not loosening, just turning him on the spot till he’s met with the man’s dark features and stunningly white smile.

“How you wound me so,” He smirks, “After I lifted all the boxes and unpacked while you were working, I’m becoming a poor shut in housewife.”

Newt chuckles against his neck, “I’d gladly play the role of the housewife, I’d rather be here twiddling my thumbs than working the night shift, _again_.”

He pulls away and looks around the room, at _their_ room with _their_ stuff in _their_ refuge that they built together.

“You did a really good job,” He praises the taller man, falling against the longue chair with a sigh. His features turn apologetic as he looks up attentively from behind his eyelashes, “I’m sorry I couldn’t help, works just been really busy. I swear half the kids in the ward through themselves off the monkey bars just to spite me.”

Alby flinches and Newt has to search his mind as to why. It’s then when he uncovers those memories that he buried with desperate hands as he threw himself into medic school and internships.

He remembered when he first told Alby, he remembered the way his tongue had loosened after a few glasses of red wine and a desperately honest kiss from the man he knew he loved. Alby had listened when he told him the story of Minho and Thomas and the way they fell in to a relationship that was a lot like yet a lot different from love. He told the man that he threw himself off the treehouse and the way Thomas had appreciated it and the way Minho pushed him away. It was a familiar tale, the words tasting like an old recipe from home that he’d reluctantly swallow based of nostalgia alone.

And Alby had listened, just listened. He didn’t interrupt or judge or move closer of further away. And when he’d finished his lover moved in closer and told him that everything was different now and it was, because for once Newt was existing for himself and Alby understood that.

Alby has scars to, has scratches and bruises that wouldn’t heal, and the words of explanation where only shared between each other. They showed each other their stretch marks, their proof of growing up that would never be thought to be covered by clothes or lies, nakedly bearing them like a promise ring that shone deeper than jewellery.

Newt just smiles at him, and they forget the awkward silence that reminds them both of the things they’d lost.

His lover makes him a cup of tea just the way he likes it and they talk about their days and their plans for the future.

The sound of the post hitting the floor halts all conversation.

Alby casually walks across the room with his signature mismatched socks, filtering through the mail as he whistles a tune to himself.

“Bills, bills, pizza menu, bills, _oh!_ Get you, _Doctor_ Newton,” He quotes from the last envelope that looks so pointlessly ordinary on top of the others. “It’s forwarded from your dad so it must be important,” He throws the letter on Newt’s lap and sits down beside him, “So Doctor Newton, would you like to formally open our first letter together.”

Newt laughs at him and tears the envelope apart with curiously excited fingers. Alby watches him with a raised eyebrow so he reads the letter aloud.

 _“Dear Doctor Isaac Newton, you have been formally invited to a-“_ His voice catches in his throat.

“To a what?!” Alby cries, “Did you win something? Did someone die?”

“No,” He dismisses, “It’s from my old school.”

The man shuffles next to him, “Back home?”

“Yeah.”

The silence becomes tense.

“They’re having a reunion,” He whispers.

Alby takes his hand into his, grip strongly reassuring, “You don’t have to go.”

Newt holds the letter like a ransom, but also as if it’s a precious memento of something he can’t bear to leave his touch. His mind goes into overdrive before his rationality kicks in and the world stops turning around him.

“No,” He whispers, “I want to go.”

Alby nods, “It’ll be fine, maybe even fun. I can come with you if you want.”

His lover’s eyes shine brightly, and Newt can see himself staring back sternly.

“No, this is something I have to do alone.”

 

* * *

 

 

Newt has to remind himself that he’s not the same boy walking down the same school halls. He’s reminded of that sense of inferiority, of muddy shoes and single steps that tore him apart far faster than the prods and judgmental whispers of mutual strangers. Things have changed but they’re still so similar to the ignorant versions of their childhood. They wear suits now and black dresses lined with pearls and make up and fakery. They gather together as a collective that mourns the memories they crave to return, before pushing back into the closet like picture albums that are covered with far more sentimental tokens.

There are few familiar faces but each one of them seems to remember him, moving away from their old cliques and past lovers to ask a few not entirely sensitive questions about his life that Newt reluctantly answers with politeness.

Teresa stands above them all, more beautiful than ever before, make-up light and natural with a modest length to her skirt that pulls just right over her frame. The people that adored her as an icon and an example to follow crowd around her, asking her about her expensive ring and husband that hangs off her arm like an accessory or a shadow that ties itself to her but is far less extravagant.

She moves away from them, high hells clicking against the familiar school floors, kissing Newt’s cheek like they’re old friends reunited once more.

“You look great,” She tells him with a smile, “I always knew you’d grow into that skin.”

The blonde laughs along with her, eyes creasing with the nature of it all. He had forgotten how much he admired the woman until now.

She turns towards the man on her arm, “This is Aris, husband of two years and not entirely useless.”

Newt turns to the man, surprised to see his slight features and unorthodox expression, he’s handsome in his own way but he looks so awkwardly tame and privileged to stand by her side.

Teresa tells him about now they met, how they fell in love and about their wedding ceremony. They live together in the prettiest suburban house with a rose garden and a gardener all thrown in with it. She had surrounded herself with the beauty that was a symptom of her birth, and she was terminally delightful.

Gravity pulls her away from him after a few shared comments, her body being consumed by the masses of popularity that she smiles at with a far more forced expression.

An old teacher that Newt doesn’t remember gives him a sticker with his name and directs him to his seat, telling the blonde about the mole on his back that he thinks should be checked out (“I’m a paediatrician” he reminds the man, “not a dermatologist”) before wondering back to the door to greet the next guest.

His table stands bare in the room, nametags aligning the placemats and Newt has that itching and entirely selfish feeling that wants to check the name tags for those familiar names. He stops himself though, mostly because the settling feeling in his chest tells him they were already there.

His leg throbs in memory, the blonde falling against his seat and gazing into the abyss of life, just of murmured sounds and the clicking of glasses. It’s almost like he’s dreaming, not a nightmare or a dream come true, more like one of those dreams he used to get when his body couldn’t move and he was both scared and excited about the creature in the shadows that watches him just outside of his line of sight.

He’s awoken by a set of footsteps that are unfittingly light and knowing, clean of mud and excessive wealth, just familiar.

Thomas, like always, turns his world upside down. He is so pointlessly ordinary in the crowd, standing high above the others like any other stranger that’s intent is careless and unwanted. Just another face in the sea of human life that awards itself with anonymity. But there’s a connection that’s always been there, a conciseness, like they’re drawn to each other like magnets and they are, and they stare, and they stop.

The brunette smiles thinly.

Newt doesn’t stand up, he doesn’t throw his arms around the other like they’re expected to, like he had thought he would and wished he wouldn’t. Thomas makes his way towards him, parting the sea of uninterested people and manipulating their current to places unknown and uncared for. He looks shy, he looks small, he looks like he’ll be crushed and ignored but he is so confidently gigantic and magnetic to Newt that he can’t see him as innocent.

“Hey,” He says, like its back then when they were kids and swinging their feet on the benches at school and laughing about those that tripped before doing it themselves.

They are so ordinary that the whole interaction seems so surreal.

Newt can’t say it back because the world has stolen his intellect that deemed his breath essential.

Thomas takes the seat across from him, picking the name tag and throwing it to the floor. He doesn’t ask if it was Thomas’ name or someone else’s, he doesn’t partially care, it doesn’t matter because it’s still crushed underneath his foot lying crumbled on the floor.

He takes the next one and reads it, frowns and places it back.

And then he looks up.

“It’s that fucker from chemistry,” Thomas tells him with a laugh, “Gally. He was a dick. He called me a faggot after gym class one day and then he hit me and then he kissed me.” He breaths out a smile, “And this is Mrs Galilei, married, can you believe it?”

Her name tag melds itself into the shape of his mouth, the curve of his lips that Newt knows, that he _remembers,_ that shaped itself into that same smirk that cast itself into his idleness.

Thomas looks to his other side at the empty seat and for a moment, he looks sad, desperate. He looks back up at him with the same expression.

“I heard you’re a doctor now, fancy that. Brenda was talking in the hall to her friend, said you were a hot older man now, she said with the pay check of a doctor she certainly wouldn’t say no.”

Newt understands him, he sees that desperate nature in the others expression. Thomas is trying to telling him he’s grown up and he’s missed him and Newt wants to say it back.

He smiles so he doesn’t cry, “Yeah, works… good.”

Thomas nods and they’re silent for a few moments.

“What about you?” Newt asks, “What do you do?”

The brunette rearranges himself so he’s supported by his arm, the gesture covering the way his jaw would quiver and the way his body would shake.

“I work in the law firm down the street,” Thomas tells him and cuts Newt off when he shows enthusiasm, “It’s not as great as it sounds, I basically staple shit and do the paperwork. The pays not great but it keeps a roof over my head.”

Thomas bites his lip and it bleeds, his tongue licking it clean.

“You live close then?” Newt asks just to keep the conversation flowing, just to hear the other speak again so he can remind himself that Thomas is real and always was real,  just to keep himself sane in his insanity.

He nods, “Yeah, really close. Moved out my aunts about when you left, my ambition was bigger than my bank account though.” He looks at he floor and frowns, “My parent’s money came to me when I was eighteen, not enough to live off but some. I didn’t take it though, would have fucking burnt it if I could…”

He swallows.

 “I was a good boy though, I gave it to the battered kids home, can you believe it, _me_ of all people being charitable,” He grins as he looks into his hands, “Some little shit might as well have a better life because of my misfortune, maybe karma will sort things out and I’ll go to heaven.”

The words are spoken in the illusion of hostility, but Thomas’ tone is one Newt had never heard before. Contention.

“But yeah,” he continues, “I live down the road, in the new estate.” He pauses long enough to look the blonde in the eye, “Where the forest used to be.”

Newt expects the memory to hurt, expects it to bring back all those rushing memories of deceit and violence and jealousy. But all Newt feels is a dull pain where there was once a tear, like a cavity that is healing and sore but far better than the rotting tooth that spread its poison before.

He nods, they both do. And then they forget.

Smiling to himself Newt reaches for the wine, pouring it into both of their glasses and taking tentative sips that lessen the severity of Thomas’s larger gulps.

“So,” The brunette says into the rim of his glass, “What’s he like?”

Newt looks up from his lap and narrows his eyes curiously. “Uh, Alby’s great, he’s…” Words lose their meaning in the shallowness of thought. “He’s good for me.”

“I’m glad,” Thomas tells him, and he is.

It almost hurts them both that it doesn’t pain them to move on. Newt wants to feel a pull towards the other, to cry out an apology about how they couldn’t have been together. He partly wishes they’d at least tried, wished he’d walked up to Thomas on graduation and asked him out, watched the other smirk as they got coffee or went to the movies or just went back to his house so Thomas could fuck him, just so he’d feel complete while being broken and remorseful. He partly wishes they had tried despite the fact they were doomed to fail, thinks maybe the destruction of a could’ve-been should’ve-been relationship would have been better than wondering what.

Newt wonders if Thomas feels the same way.

“What about you?” The blonde decides to ask.

Thomas’ eyes fall onto his, “No. There was this one guy but it didn’t work out. He was a bit of a cock actually,” He laughs into his palm, “It seems I have a type.”

Newt laughs too, “Yeah well, at least this one was gay.”

And then they’re both laughing until tears form and Newt realises it doesn’t feel like it did before, because it was a little easier now, less wounds to poke at with curiosity. Their laughter fades to silence and they lose themselves to time that ticks slowly on in the distance.

The light outside fades into shades of midnight, the food eaten and the wine vanished, Thomas filtering over to a few old acquaintances while Newt watches the others dance and have fun. Their youth is present in their smiles, like they’re born again, resurrected in the most unholiest of circumstances. They smile and they laugh and against the music Newt realises that this where it ends, where the old friends part ways and never meet again, comfortable in their showmanship that brags about their occupation and attractive spouses.

They are smiling through their regret.

But something isn’t right and it’s only when Newt goes outside for some fresh air does he realise what.

Minho, like never before, turns up last. He walks through the exit with a conscious attention, breathing in the darkness and the cool of the night air and sighing. He closes his eyes as he reveals in the cover of the night, as the moonlight shines across his skin and spotlights him like nature was prodding Newt to do anything else except stare.

His eyes filter open, the deepest pools of his mind awake and sinking the atmosphere, taking in the sight of Newt standing half on the field and half on the concrete.

He smiles, small, simple and friendly, as he walks towards him.

Minho opens his mouth to say something and Newt both fears and craves the words or the promise of sound that would shatter the silence, the sharp remnants of it littering around their feet with the threat of harm.

And then closes his mouth and pulls the blonde to his chest, his face nuzzling the mess of blonde hair and breathing in the nostalgia.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, consumed by the mass of their combined bodies that are tied so tightly together. “I’m so sorry.”

Tears form and they swell as a choking sob that he swallows with a smiles and laugh. And then everything just returns itself to simplicity.

“I forgive you,” he whispers.

Minho pulls away and Newt notes down his handsome face and sincere smile, eyes so wise and mature with the small fletching’s of life.

“You’re the talk of the bloody town,” Minho tells him with a laugh, “I barely had time to say hello when I got back before mum was telling me all about you becoming a doctor. Even coming here after all these years, all those friends I thought would jump at the opportunity to see my mug again asked me questions about you.”

Newt breaths out a chuckle and shakes his head.

Minho’s expression falters slightly, “They thought we’d be friends forever.”

The space between them echoes the wind.

“Things changed,” Newt tells him, “We needed to be apart.”

The taller man nods, “I wish we didn’t, I wished I hadn’t left you and Thomas because I was scared and turn up out the blue just to-“

Newt cuts him off with a hand on his arm, “We all made mistakes, we all fucked up, Min. It was hard, it was so bloody impossible to try and keep us all happy yet hurt the one that didn’t agree. There was no right end to this, to us, there was no way it couldn’t ended with happiness. We needed time apart, to grow.”

Minho nods and looks at the ground. He’s scared Newt’s still in love with him and Newt’s scared too; he’s scared like the child he used to be that knew only of obsession and Minho.

“And we’re happy now,” Newt promises him, “I mean look you in your fancy suit and tie, you definitely done something right.”

He laughs, “Yeah, you’re not the only one whose dreams have come true. I got a job managing a football team, they’re not the best but it’s like a family. I love it, never thought I’d make it until I did.”

 _Family_ , Newt repeats in his head.

Minho seems to hear it too.

“It only got better when I met Harriet, and no we’ve been married… _god_ about six years now,” He smiles and his complexion is graced with the expression of pure joy.

“How did you meet?” Newt asks because he should and because he wants to, wants to remember the words so he can repeat them to the childish version of his brain and convince them of a future than never involved him.

“We went to the same university, I bumped into her in a bar she worked at in our last year, drunk of course and sprouting something stupid. She called me a cab and took my number, surprising hungover me that woke up to a bright screen and a text asking how I was,” He shakes his head with a grin. “It’s weird, I can’t really explain it, we just… clicked. She was nice, made me work for her, understand her and I did. Never expected to settle down, never expected to grow up.”

They ignore the cold in favour of their smiles.

“I’m a dad now,” Minho tells him and Newt congratulates him, “They’re beautiful.” He pulls out his wallet and even with just the smallest slice of moonlight Newt can see a picture of two smiling girls with matching ponytails and missing teeth. “They’re my whole world. About shit myself when Harry told me, _twins_ she said, forgot to tell me that they run in the family.”

“They’re beautiful,” Newt agrees.

Behind the girls in the picture there is a lavish garden and a towering oak that the girls point to. At first Newt thinks they’re pointing to the sky and the clouds above them, but then he sees the corner of a treehouse in the frame.

“I built it them a year ago, Melissa loves it, they both do. They cause all sorts of mischief,” He meets Newt’s eyes that reflect the moonlight, “Just like we use to.”

It’s then that everything falls where it was destined to, where the definitions and the ranking of all he held dear seem to gravitate to a place of logic. Newt’s childhood memories where not those to be disgusted by or forgotten, they were to be a tribute and implemented into their character for them to grow and flourish from.

He smiles freely to the taller man, their conversation gravitating to Alby and his work and all the things they need to learn from each other to complete the ignored painting for their childhood.

Eventually the cold gets the best of them and they go inside, the school halls void of life. At the end of the corridor stands Thomas, expression confused and anxious and vulnerable above everything else. The darkness casts itself around him, his shadows casting shadows that flee from the light of the moon, all light disappearing when the door pulls to a close.

Minho too stands taken back behind Newt, guiltily bearing his head as he steps towards the brunette and pulls him close. The blonde can hear his choking sobs against Minho’s chest, can hear him splutter out apologies and remarks of regret that Minho shushes with his own.

Newt’s not sure how long they stand there, how long the two embrace and how long he watches them do so, but eventually everything merges together and they’re all a collective mess of hugging arms.

They pull apart and Thomas wipes his tears on his sleeve, laughing out a cry as he steps back. “

“The old gang back together again,” He remarks with a voice of nonchalance that betrays is bright smile.

Minho laughs and pats his arm, the three of them exchanging vows of change as they slide down the walls and abandon civilisation in favour of sitting in the hallway. They speak in silence and dream in colour, all thoughts drifting with the presence of one another.

This is the ending, Newt realises, they had read the back the book as children, they all knew how it was going to end.

Newt thinks maybe he should write an auto-biography wonders what he would title it and where where it would fit on someone’s bookshelf, fearing the intruding eyes of those who would read it.

As a child it would have been an adventure novel, the story of a boy too small for his own feet and of a forest that homed the immortal heroes and villains that he had created. There would be a build of tension, a climax of a battle scene where he would fight tree branches shaped like monsters with his loyal subjects at his side and, most importantly, a resolution.

In his pre-teen years it would be a tragedy, or failing that a gritty and realistic tale of a boy with crutches who was weighed down with the crushing feeling of depression. It would be simple, short and anti-climactic, a setting of only his bedroom and the sound of his clock that punctuated every silence. It wouldn’t end, not really, it would just fade in opacity like an ellipsis as it stopped mid-sentence.

And then when he was a teenager, at that awkward and unsure age where he started to question the greyscale and dream of technicolour. This story, of course, would be a romance, love and fickler things the subject of his novel, all it’s ‘I’s dotted with hears and illustrated with tear-stains. It would tell the tale of a beast he called love and a charming knight he christened a hero that chased after the thief that stole from the rich and gave to himself. It would end the way he dreamed it would, with perfection, and it would please them with a biased and untrue account of deception.

But now, at the more mature and wiser age that he is, Newt doesn’t know what genre his story would be. There is love and revelation, cries and laughs, kisses and bruises. It’s a combination of who was born as, who he grew to be and the mistakes he made. Through the logistics and demands of an editor, where Newt would be sat in front of a board and asked for a definition, Newt would just stutter and blink. He supposes now that if he stuck to this ideology, if he picked up each book about his life and squeeze it together, that it would still be a romance.

Because this is a love story, it really is, of three boys so desperately infatuated with one another, of deceit and honesty and bruising kisses in the darkest parts of the forest. It _is_ a love story, it’s just one with no destination and Newt can accept that with his head held high and a feeling of resolution and pride in his chest.

Thomas’s cheek falls against his shoulder, Minho’s head falling along with it and Newt’s soul feels heavy with their presence.

They sigh, finally at peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can’t believe it’s finally over. I would like to thank you all for reading this story; I’ve said it many a times but honestly thank you for every kudos, every hit, every bookmark and every comment. This story has been nothing short of a joy to write and share with every one of you and for anyone that just so happens to read it in the future. I’m planning a range of future stories so I’ll be absent for a few weeks or so planning chapter by chapter like I did with this one so don’t forget about me! I hope this won’t be the last time we see each other.
> 
> Thanks you so, SO, much for reading


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